As a professional photographer you’d think that I would have TONS of pictures of Lee and myself. You might assume that our walls are covered with photos and piles of photo books on our coffee table. Sadly, this isn’t the case. I’m always telling my clients how important it is to document your family, right now. I stress the importance of hiring a professional so that they get great images that they can hang on their walls at home. But I’ve been spending so much time educating clients about this, that I’ve neglected to do it myself!!!

I had several of our engagement and wedding portraits enlarged and put into frames. I LOVE those photos, but those are the only professional pictures we’ve have done, even after being married for over 3 years! We wanted to have a photo session done for our 1st anniversary but the photographer we wanted to hire was no longer doing photo sessions. So it got put on the back burner and life just got busy. We never made a real effort to do a session, until recently.

Over the past six months or so I started thinking about it again but I knew that it would be an investment if I wanted to hire amazing photographers. So I just kept it in the back of my mind. I didn’t know if Lee would be up for spending a lot of money on photos, especially after loosing my nursing income. But it was on my mind for most of the afternoon one day, and I finally just said, “I want to have Michael & Carina do a photo sessions for us.”

After following Michael & Carina for quite awhile I knew that I wanted them to do our photo session. I love their work. I love every blog post that they write and I’m always inspired by their work. After talking to them on the phone a few times, I had the opportunity to work with them. I knew they were great people from our conversations on the phone, and when I finally met them in person they were fantastic! I have raved about them to Lee on several occasions (ok, fine… I think I talk about them to Lee at least once a day, haha).

So when Lee said “sure,” I was totally shocked. I expected him to let me down gently and explain that this isn’t something we can afford right now, but maybe it could be something that we could do next year. We both agreed that this was something we’d have to save up for, but it would be worth every penny! Lee was also excited to finally meet Michael & Carina after hearing so many great things. Lee was actually looking forward to a photo session!

Everything about our experience with them was great. They helped me decide on a location, Carina helped me put my outfit together, and they were so laid back and great during the session. And as if that wasn’t already fantastic, our images are wonderful. I love each and every picture. They are such skilled photographers and I love the look the create with film. I couldn’t be happier with our decision.

So I finally took my own advice and I can say (from both the photographer’s AND the client’s perspective) that hiring a professional photographer is totally worth it. Not everyone has $1,000 just sitting around. We certainly didn’t. Hiring someone for $300 would be fairly easy for us to do, but I knew that the top tier photographers would be a bigger investment. And rightly so. They have more experience, better equipment, (in M&C’s case) shoot film, and provide better customer service and products. And Michael & Carina were worth every penny. I’m so glad that we took them time to save up and do this photo session.