Community > Competition

Left to right: Carl Heyerdahl, Daniel Ebersole, ya boi, Mark Spooner, Joe Codrington (not pictured: Andy Hansen)

One of the biggest challenges I have with running my own business is not having an office full of co-workers to visit every day. I’m pretty introverted and appreciate time to myself, but during the workday, I’d love to be surrounded by like-minded people who are doing what they love for a living. That community and energy are things I thrive on. While I spend most days in my home office, I take every chance I get to get out and be with people. With that said, I’d like to introduce you to the closest people I call co-workers.

From left to right, we’ve got Carl Heyerdahl, Daniel Ebersole, yours truly, Mark Spooner, and Joe Codrington. (Andy Hansen is our honorable mention, as he wasn’t around for this group photo.) We all live in the same small town, and all maintain our own thriving businesses. We’re all primarily wedding photographers, though we shoot a variety of subjects outside of it, and push work each other’s way any time we’re already booked up. It’s honestly crazy to me that there is such a high concentration of professional photographers, most of us full-time, in such a small place. And while the wedding market is certainly thriving around us, I think the bigger contributor to all of our individual success is the fact that we build each other up. We push referrals along to one another, second shoot for each other, and invest in each other’s well being, professionally and personally. We have mid-week work sprints at local coffee shops, get dinner one-on-one, and consistently stay in touch in a group text that is, miraculously, all blue messages. To have these guys as friends and co-workers is a privilege, and I’m so grateful for all of them.

We took portraits of each other last week just for fun. We reminded ourselves, and each other, that photography was first a hobby. It was a joy to celebrate that together.

Photography, Small BusinessSteven Schultz