Q: At what point did you decide to do photography full time? What was the deciding factor to take the plunge?

A: This is such a great question!! I started shooting in 2009, and I didn’t actually decide to take it full time til 2014. I’d been in Savannah for a year and a half at that point, and was both single AND miserable in my job, and I decided I HAD to find a way to make my life worth living.

Not in a scary or dramatic way, but I did have a reality check moment that I needed to stop waiting around for a husband and just pretend I would be single forever – and I asked myself “what would make life worth living if you were alone for the rest of your life and a husband and family weren’t on the table?” And my answer was – run my own business full time!

So in August 2014, I rebranded to Apt. B Photography and invested in a new logo and brand elements, and made a whole new website. Then in January 2015, my cousin asked me when I was going to quit my job, and I gave a vague “oh you know, when it feels right, in a couple of years.” And she responded that if I kept saying that, I would never quit – and she was right. She told me to pick a quit date and figure out what needs to happen by that date to make it possible. 

So, I set a deadline for when I would leave my job – Feb. 29, 2016 (I wanted to “take the leap” on Leap Day), and I decided I wanted 6 months of savings in my bank account by then.

And then I beat that date by 6 months!!

At the end of August 2015, I realized I was so booked up for that fall that I couldn’t physically keep doing my full-time job and get everything done for my weddings. I was only a few thousand dollars short of my 6 months of savings goal, so I felt safe enough to put in my two weeks notice, and Sept. 15, 2015 was my last day in corporate America.

So my advice is always to do exactly what Jamie told me to do – pick a date and what needs to happen by that date. I truly believe I manifested the results I wanted by having a concrete date and what I wanted to happen by that date written down. I worked hard too, but I’d been working hard before that – so I know it was more about putting what I wanted out into the universe and then aligning with that goal with every fiber of my being.