I’m so excited for today’s announcement! It’s been a long time coming. I’ve debated and debated how I want to announce it, how I can make it exciting for everyone, and should I include a whole long story about how this announcement came to be? Well—I’ll try to keep it short and exciting! 🙂

If you’ve followed along over the years, you’ll know along with my photography business, I’ve also been pursuing my corporate career during the week. I’ve been doing this for almost 5 years now. I never felt the pressure to choose one or the other, because I was comfortable. The income from my corporate career allowed me to pursue my business the way I WANTED to. I’ve been able to nurture my business and grow slowly—taking on clients that I love and building a brand that’s genuinely me. It’s been a SAFE approach. Safe is great, but it’s recently also become limiting.

Because my time was so limited, I had to severely cut back on the number of weddings and sessions I could take on—and forget about blogging! It’s been SO tough feeling like my business could be so much more if I only had the time. Meanwhile, my family is only getting part of me. Even when I made time for us to be together, I wasn’t present.

Having Connor now, and seeing the past 8 months FLY by, being present has become more important than ever to me. There are so many things in my life that I love, but the most important ones (Connor and Calvin) were being neglected—and that just doesn’t make sense. Here I am preaching to my clients to live in the moment and capture the milestones to be relived forever, and I’m letting all of those moments pass me by while staring at my computer screen editing photos.

Funny enough, while flying yesterday, I looked over and saw a guy underline a quote in a book he was reading, and it couldn’t be more appropriate for me right now:

“Never give up anything for nothing.”

I’ve been giving up 50+ hours a week for what? Sure, I needed a paycheck. But now here I am with a business that not only provides a paycheck, but more importantly, it fulfills me and gives me so much joy! Why am I limiting THAT?!

So, while my practicality has been nagging at me and making me question myself NON-STOP—I decided to finally take a risk.

As of today, I’m officially a full time business owner!

Stephanie Michelle is now a full time operating business and I cannot be more excited for what’s to come! You can expect to see so many new things, like:

• A whole new website that better reflects what my business has become over the years!
• Tons of blogs! So many beautiful past clients that NEED to be shared with the world!
• An amazing new experience for my clients! Now that I have the time, I’ll be able to incorporate the boutique experience I’ve always wanted to provide!
• And so, so much more! The to-do list is pages long after spending years daydreaming about going full time one day. 🙂

Session giveaway!

This is all SUPER exciting for me, and it’s all been driven by my passion for capturing authentic photos of my sweet clients. So I’m celebrating the most appropriate way for a photographer to celebrate: by giving away a boudoir and couple session!

So join me for the celebration on Instagram and more details on how to enter! Winners will be announced on Instagram at the end of the day Monday, July 4!

IG@smichellephoto