Orion Photo Group Success Story Podcast
Orion Photo Group Success Story Podcast
Memories in Focus with Photographer and Bride Kate Duffy
Have you ever wondered how a professional photographer views the world through the lens, particularly on one of the most significant days in a person's life? Kate Duffy, a Philadelphia-based photographer and recent bride, joins us to weave her personal narrative with the perspectives she’s gained from both sides of the camera. From her childhood intrigue with a point-and-shoot to her pivotal role at Orion Photo Group, Kate's story is a fascinating look at the passion and evolution behind the art of capturing life's key moments.
Photography education has undergone a massive transformation, yet certain truths remain timeless. This episode delves into the enduring importance of traditional photography education and the incomparable value of real-world experience. We discuss how hands-on learning, such as mastering film development and studio lighting, still holds its ground in the digital age. Kate also shares how her unique experiences as both the subject and creator of cherished wedding memories have honed her eye for those once-in-a-lifetime shots.
Step into the vibrant world of a wedding photography studio, where every day is a new adventure in storytelling. We explore how being part of a dynamic team like OPG can dramatically broaden a photographer's repertoire, presenting opportunities and challenges that solo photographers might miss. Plus, Kate gives us a peek behind the curtain at the enchanting task of encapsulating a bride's special day and offers pearls of wisdom on elevating customer service to unparalleled heights. Join us on this journey through the shutter, where memories are immortalized one click at a time.
Howdy. Thanks for tuning into Orion Photo Group's exclusive podcast. For each episode we're going to dive into the lives of OPG's photographers and videographers across the country. We're going to talk, shop, hear their stories and listen to any advice they want to offer us up. So grab a tasty beverage and settle in for some fun conversations featuring our little community that's you. Let's go Alright. Another episode of Success Stories. It's been a minute since I've had a Success Stories episode. There's been lots of tips and tricks and I hope that you are listening to those. As you can tell, we might have a special guest doggy in the background. That's okay. We welcome those guests. There he or she is, that's totally fine. But we have a real special guest today, Kate Duffy. She's a photographer in the Philadelphia area. She is also a recent bride. We're going to talk to her about her experience with both of those, but she's also a person who works with me in the Orion Photo Group. So three things to talk about. Welcome, Kate.
Speaker 2:Thanks, I've been looking forward to this conversation and catching up with you.
Speaker 1:Kate, it's been fun. I have been working together a couple of years now. It's been fun chatting with her. She helped me when I did some meet and greets. A couple I think was last year or the year before we got to meet in Philadelphia. We've known each other through our various networks over the years. So if we don't know who you are, give us a brief bio on your history.
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, where to start Peeling back the onion. I have been a photographer for as long as I knew how to put film in a camera and take pictures. That's true, I have pictures from elementary school, but I started shooting weddings after I graduated with my bachelor's in photography, had some professors that really guided me and gave me some experience right out of the gate in college, which was awesome. And then I branched out and shot for a couple of different independent studios while I was building my own business over the years and I was a nanny at the time that I found a Ryan photo group in 2011. We were George Street photo and video back then. They were just branching out into the Philadelphia market and I spoke to Michael as one of our owners. He did my interview way back when. I tell you how small we were back then and it was just great to realize that there was a network of other talented individuals out there that would allow you to do what you love as a photographer. And at that point I was able to branch into the Philadelphia market with support of George Street and, ultimately, orion photo group and grow my name as part of one of the Orion photo group shooters Started in 2011.
Speaker 2:Shot for gosh right around almost 10 years with Orion and saw the what I think is so cool, and I'm sure other photographers out there and videographers out there can relate. As you know, start a business or you start, you know yourself as a talent member of the industry and you start to see, year over year, second, third, fourth generation clients coming back and saying my friend, had you shoot their wedding? And I started seeing that with George Street. Year over year, I was starting to see the same clients that I had shot weddings previously for as well, be it these newer weddings that we were still shooting. So it was really neat to see George Street grow in that capacity, which continued to fuel my passion for photography.
Speaker 2:And then 2019, before I made the jump to HQ, I thought I was going to go off and be a teacher overseas.
Speaker 2:I got my master's in special education and things took the turn the way that they did and I ended up taking on the director of client experience role with Orion photo group in 2019 and coming on board leading our customer service team, which was awesome and another way to use my varied skill sets over the years that I had developed to continue to influence weddings from all over the country and talk to many different talent members and try to ensure the success not only of the weddings I was shooting but the weddings that others were shooting for us.
Speaker 2:And it was so exciting to see that side of the business as well. And I've been told I'm now in my fifth year and I'm the director of client operations and talent operations now because we've merged those two departments together, because seeing that start to finish wedding experience is so important. As many of you know, running your own businesses, you're the ones that are out there talking to the clients and getting them to come on board and start to finish. We handle all of that for our talent. So it's been really exciting to see the story come full circle and know that I have a big hand in that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I definitely want to talk about the client experience, but I want to put a pin in that real quick and just go back to the beginning. What I love with love hearing from many photographers is you said that, and it is often the story. I've been shooting for as long as I can remember. I always love to ask the question of what was the spark? What was that beginning? Oh gosh, this is awesome, I needed to keep doing this. What was it? A camera that somebody gave to you, or like? What was the spark?
Speaker 2:Gosh, that's a great question.
Speaker 1:And I always love, I always love hitting people with that because they're like uh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I think you know as I. I had a point and shoot camera that I used to buy film feverishly from Walmart, 35 millimeter film these four and five pack specials.
Speaker 2:You know you thought you were getting a real, a real good deal at the time buying all those and I would go through. That was crazy. But I just had a little point and shoot camera that I used to load and I would take pictures out in the playground and my friends, whatever. And then when I graduated eighth grade, I remember asking for an SLR wasn't digital at that point, it was still film.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I, my parents gave me that and that carried me through high school and I did pictures for our plays and, um, our, I was in the marching band total nerd in high school, um, and then, when I was a senior in high school, I took my first black and white photography class at a local community college and learned you know about developing the film and making the prints and we wouldn't have great conversations about our photo critiques, that our professor would drill us on the good, bad and the ugly of the things that we decided to shoot that week.
Speaker 2:Um, and then I specifically remember having a conversation with my mother as we were getting ready to buy my books for art school when I went to college, and I remember telling her now, little sidebar, my mom had the opportunity to get into photography and she dabbled in everything but never turned into a professional, but always had an interest and took lots of pictures of us as kids.
Speaker 2:But I remember being in the bookstore and looking at her and going I'm going to school for photography because my books still have pictures in them and she was just like that's probably not the right reason to do that. Um, but I was very serious and I college was great, I mean. So that whole it was just very organic for me. I think you know some people fall into photography later in life, but it was just second nature for me. I feel like from the beginning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I love hearing that story about the high school art teacher. It's, uh, you know, and the photography teacher. It disappoints me that my kids don't have that same opportunity to take photography and black and white film developing and, uh, the critiquing of artwork. Um, so many art programs are cut now and I owe all of my success to two art teachers from not only one to our teacher, but to our teachers. And I actually had two photography programs that I took as a sophomore and a junior and then, when there was no more photography to take, they just welcomed me to come into the dark room anytime that I want, I wanted, and if it wasn't for that experience and I also joke that I was the only place in the high school that I could smoke cigarettes while developing film, which was probably incredibly terribly not good for me, but it was the 80s, so it was a different time, as I say to my kids, and, uh, but without that experience, I never would have had that, that spark for me.
Speaker 1:It sounds like you had a similar experience, and my and I still keep in touch with both of those teachers. Um, they're wonderful people. One of them, just one of the teachers. Actually, both of them wished me a happy birthday last week and you know, I graduated from high school 35, 40, 40 years ago. I mean, it's crazy. Uh, maybe not that long ago, but, um, it's that experience of, of that, that that we don't get today, and I don't even know if there's a community college you can really get that stuff anymore. I digress, forgive me, um, but you're also one of the few people uh, many people don't go to school for photography and you know, um, you can tell us a little bit about that experience?
Speaker 2:Sure, I mean it was yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was kind of like if you would go to school for med school at this point, like you have your classes and you have your lab, so if you're doing, your pre-med science stuff. I definitely had undergraduate classes that I would take that were an hour or 90 minutes. But all of my art classes were three hours.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You were sitting drawing, painting, taking pictures, doing all the different mediums and I just you know, given that opportunity, I don't think I would change anything based on my experience, because I think you really needed that time, in those different formats, to develop your skill. And I was a terrible painter I don't know if anybody out there knows the different paint colors but all of my stuff looked like burnt umber, which basically was a really bad color brown other than tube Because I, just I, was terrible, I couldn't do the 2D in that sense, but I could definitely see lights and I've learned over the years, even more so after college, how to see light and really appreciate that skill and the time to your point that you're given to develop that in an art school program. Yeah, I think there's a lot of benefit to learning how to develop your own film. I bulk loaded my own film to try to save my hands of poor college students.
Speaker 1:We would both load rolls that have like 80 pictures on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know I knowing the basics and where we came from. In a society that is so digital and so instantaneous, anymore it seems fleeting. But I would challenge anyone out there who's interested in photography, even if you feel you've got the best of the best gear, get out there and try to find some some type of additional education from the basics of, maybe you know, picking up a roll of film and putting it in a camera and seeing what she got, even if you don't end up developing it yourself. But it's just a different skill set.
Speaker 1:So yeah, no, I totally agree with that, and that was one of my questions is would you feel I personally feel like going to college for a photography program, unless you're looking to become a fine art photographer or some sort of commercial type role? I don't see there it being a? What's the word I'm looking for?
Speaker 1:I don't want to say not a good idea. I don't see the reason I fell. I'm failing to see the reason for going to art school for photography at this point at this venture. But back then that was. You went to get to learn the basics just enough information to get you out there to go either go work like in my case I went to go work for other photographers as an assistant. Back then you had big crews that you'd go work for on commercial jobs or things like that. Those things don't really exist anymore. Most of it you can learn by just going out with a wedding photographer and learning from them. But you answered my question in the sense that you wouldn't have changed anything at that point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say the biggest takeaway for me was the ability that I had to take an internship with a well-known modeling photographer who's still out there teaching posing and lighting and studio setup, where I really could hone that craft Again, where so many of us are shooting available light, have great lenses, great gear, but really learning that off-camera flash the way to put a gel on a camera or flash is gonna change different modalities in the way your photos end up looking. Learning posing, learning how to direct a person in front of you. That may not be a model I think a lot of us as wedding photographers struggle with that on the fly, where it's live event but you still have that element of needing to pose and direct and get great organic pictures. So I think that was something I gleaned from that experience as well that I've definitely taken forward in my career with me too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean for sure. And not only did you get that experience, but you also have the experience of being a bride we're not recently, but we're not gonna get to that quite yet I wanna talk about. So you got out there, you started shooting some weddings. Then you picked up with OPG and you started shooting for them. But prior to you working for OPG, I love to talk about your experience.
Speaker 1:I worked for a wedding photographer a local wedding photographer similar to OPG from when I was in high school. I started working for him when I was 16 years old. I shot my first wedding when I was 17. I was baby, face, teenager and I would go out there and shoot these weddings with him. We'd sometimes shoot five, six weddings in a weekend. We would kinda tag team, like I was his guy and I would start a wedding with him. I'd finish the wedding, he'd go to the next wedding and we kinda would work that way the entire weekend.
Speaker 1:It was nuts. It was really really crazy and there'd be times where we worked in catering halls where we'd be shooting the same company. We'd be shooting five events inside the one catering hall. It was crazy and it was good times and I learned a lot from. All of the people that worked for him were insane personalities and I learned a lot from them. So that base that I learned over 10 years working for him gave me all the knowledge I needed and I worked for. I did commercial, I wanted to be a fast photographer. I never even wanted to be a wedding photographer. Talk to me about the benefits of working for a large studio like OPG and some of the things that you've learned.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I mean certainly there's lots of different independent photographers out there that are always looking for second shooters, but the volume of work.
Speaker 2:It sounds like you were lucky in the setting you were in you had a lot of volume coming in, but a lot of independent shooters, even all of us that are trying to make it on our own in some way. Throughout our lives we can never generate the volume of work to get out there and be shooting constantly and consistently, and I think that was something, at least for me, that I found with Orion that I could shoot 30, 40, 50 weddings a year. I didn't do that necessarily consistently every year, but I did have seasons where, like I said, by the time I had put in a handful of years, I was being sought out. As you know well, if Kate's available, I wanna have her as my wedding photographer through George Street and I think that goes a long way. You know, I find that certainly you could be out there shooting for yourself or shooting for other studios that you know, if you get whatever they decide to pay you, but I always have found the volume being the benefit for me. You know I don't need to make a million bucks but I'm happy doing what I'm doing and I'd rather be out there doing it every weekend if I could, when I was out shooting as much as I was.
Speaker 2:I just love the experience. I loved getting to see all the different weddings. I think the other thing for me, specifically with my experience with Orion, is the diversity in couples that we attract, where the clients are then hand selecting you. If you're a lead photographer from your portfolio of work and I don't know that as an independent photographer I would have gotten the diversity in the portfolio, whether you know it was locations or seasons or clients or large or small wedding parties. Or I had a wedding that I shot on a pop billy pink farm once for George Street. So random but so fun, you know, it's just. I think that for me is some of the highlights and benefits, for sure, of working with Orion and what I've experienced myself.
Speaker 1:And that's I didn't even think of that. That's not something I would have thought to be your answer, which is really awesome. And I totally agree with you that If I hadn't put in that kind of intense amount of work I mean, it was, it was it was crazy. You know, I'd start on a Friday night, who wouldn't finish too late on a Sunday night, and Sometimes there'd be an Orthodox wedding on Monday or Tuesday and if it wasn't for that, it just became second nature what I was doing and back then it was very cookie cutter.
Speaker 1:You gave me 15 rolls of 120 film and told me if I shot 15 he was gonna kill me. You know he expected 13 at the most, which is like 150 pictures on a 15-roll exposure of meeting format. I Often joke that I would love to challenge a wedding photographer today to shoot only 150 pictures OPG. I'm not telling you to do that, by the way, just be clear about that. But I Often think about that. But if it wasn't that that predicted planning for every shot, that I did every time I took picture on my camera to make sure that and you know we were using we were, we were inside receptions, we were using multiple lights and.
Speaker 1:I had this giant potato masher on top I that's what we called it like this giant flash on top of my camera, and the rig weighed like 20 pounds. It was insane and if it wasn't that repetition of doing it, I would. It made me the photographer that I'm at. So that's a really good point and you're right, a lot of studios will not have the volume of work that OPG could give you and building your portfolio.
Speaker 1:The one thing that you and I'm looking at your website now, the one thing that I didn't get from this guy is he was very specific weddings. We shot big Jewish weddings. That's all we shot, and every now and again we shoot Catholic or Christian wedding. So I had, you know, basically the same couple every weekend. Nothing wrong with it. But you know, looking at the diversity of your work and we'll put a link to your OPG portfolio in in the show notes for you but you know you have so many different kinds of couples, all shapes and sizes, ethnicities, and when you're building your portfolio, which OPG allows you to do, it's really invaluable and I used to meet the people all the time when I had my own studio and they'd be like you know, I'm really looking for a Park wedding, or I'm really looking for this kind of wedding and I don't do. You have anything like that and With OPG you can build that kind of portfolio.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean again, people are hand selecting through our sales process the lead photographer that they want to work with if they do Purchase photography with us. I know some clients just purchase video because they have their photographers. No shame in that. But, you know, definitely getting to Select the lead photographer based on not even necessarily conversation. Now we do have clients that reach out to us and say I'd love to have a cup of coffee or, you know, meeting with our, with our talents, to get to know them. We encourage them to book an engagement session so they can get out there and shoot with you and that way, you're also paid for that time and effort and energy.
Speaker 2:But, you know, seeing what clients have chosen me based on my portfolio not even ever getting to meet me prior to an engagement session or a wedding, to your point, you know just really yielded me a huge battery of all different kinds of clients from all different walks of life, from all different seasons, locations and everything, and really allowed me to just focus on Go in the extra mile for everybody to make sure that their wedding day was extraordinary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it shows in your work. Beautiful, beautiful work, all right. So finally, you recently were also in front of the camera as a bride.
Speaker 1:I was and, if I haven't said it enough, I'm so happy for you and I'm so excited and you know, congratulation, congratulations, of course. Um, I know for me personally. You know I shot weddings for 15 years before I was a groom and it changed my life. It changed. It changed the way my, my entire perspective After that. It really was altering for me to be In that experience. Talk to me about your experience.
Speaker 2:I mean. Well, uh, not many people outside of my, my close family network know the know the backwards planning that we did. But we decided we were gonna Get married the night before a friend of mine got married. We decided that we were gonna get married in December. Now this was July of this past year and we still weren't engaged. But we knew we were gonna get married between Christmas and New Year's and we decided we were gonna do it in Chicago.
Speaker 2:My, my husband's, family lives out in Chicago, which is the reason, but I also love Chicago, opg's in Chicago. It's kind of always been a special place to me and for him. And then we came home from that trip my mom handed us a Viking brochure and said maybe you guys want to look at going to this one day. That week we booked our honeymoon. We still weren't engaged but we we got engaged in August. You know I obviously love him dearly and we've had so much fun in the time that we've been together as as a couple and so we planned in about four months, a wedding that could probably take people Many, many months and maybe a year or so to plan.
Speaker 2:But I knew what I wanted. I wanted something small and intimate. It ended up being an unexpected kind of destination wedding because it was in Chicago over the holidays, but I think our biggest takeaway was, you know, we woke up the next day just trying to viscerally remember everything that happened that day, and I know I've always talked to my couples and just said you know, you need to take some time and just understand the state's gonna fly by and I'm here and I'm gonna guide you as I'm, as I'm Photographing their weddings, but I mean literally, I put on my dress and the day was over. That's, that's how quickly it felt. So, you know, I think Even in the best laid plans of someone who plans thousands of weddings a year, with the help of my team and someone like myself that's been in the industry almost 20 plus years, at this point, my makeup artist showed up two and a half hours late To do my hair and makeup, you know.
Speaker 2:But we made up time as the day went on and I think Now you, just at the end of the day, can plan the day as best as you can, but it's still a day and there's still humans involved and it didn't snow and it wasn't super windy. You know, in Chicago it can be any joke that the weather's bipolar. It can change in an instant, but it was perfect. You know, I Just, but it was crazy. It went so quick, so quick. Cocktail hour. You planned cocktail hour even to the best of your plans. If you want to be there, you end up. It's it's really for everybody else. We hired a pianist that played for two hours. I think I heard five minutes of his song. I look forward to seeing the video. But the best, the best of the day was I secured a photo permit for Union Station, chicago and that's where we did our first look and we got there and, obviously, still being around the holidays, it was just kind of dusk and I don't remember it was before I saw him or after I saw him. But at some point, when we were standing outside, my husband and I together, they turned on the up lights and it was this red green, red green, red green succession.
Speaker 2:And if anybody's listening and it hasn't seen, I've shared a couple of my wedding photos on the Facebook group, so certainly go check them out and you'll see what I'm talking about. But just Incredible. You know an incredible moment. Photos and video are so valuable and so important. I clung to those desperately anything that my friends and family had taken and shared. I actually created a free Photo sharing app where my friends and family I encourage them days in advance to start putting their their journey to us and their their wedding day photos together, and it was so neat to see different perspectives. But that kind of Curb my enthusiasm gave me some patience to wait for my Photographers and videographers to get their stuff together after the wedding to yeah, I don't know, philly, I was gone on a tangent, but I could go on a tangent. No, no, not a tangent at all.
Speaker 1:And it's exactly what I was, I was looking for. You're right, and I think everybody says the same thing like it just goes by so quickly. There's usually a couple of memorable moments, like, as you just said, and, and those will become more vivid as the years go by. And it does go so quickly and, and you know, when you become the photographer in the next few weddings, the advice that you give to a couple you know will be the same like enjoy this moment, don't sweat the small stuff, it's not a big deal. You know things are going to go wrong and you know, no pressure for you as a photographer to get great. For me it was. You know we're gonna get great pictures at the wedding.
Speaker 1:We hard a somebody who worked for the Person that I've been working for and, as predicted, as he was walking down the aisle, the flashes weren't working and we had a stop and it was hilarious. You know, not for me, for him, he was a mess. Afterwards, you know, like is I felt terrible for him. We're still friends and he took great pictures and it was what it was. But those are the things that you, you, you have to roll with and you know those moments are just so amazing and you know those memories, you can ruin them for yourselves and that was, that was the one thing that you know. I just wanted great memories, which, which, which we have, and we'll be married 25 years this this November, and and it worked.
Speaker 1:So you know, you know, but it definitely, really, really changed my perspective. When I looked at a couple or I did things, I saw things differently. I don't know, it's really hard for me, I've never really been able to put my my finger on it but I saw things in a different way as a photographer and I think it was just the perspective of seeing that emotion and understanding those butterflies in their stomach. Until you go through it, I don't think you can understand, until you've gone through the gut-wrenching process of dealing with your families and and all of that stuff. It's, it's all of it and it all comes together when you're standing in front of each other, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think it's almost. You know, I've described it as like sensory overload or just like my nervous system at one point.
Speaker 2:Yep through the day just kind of like shuts down because it's every. It's the one, maybe one of the few times in your life that you'll have Everyone. However, whatever percentage of that, is that everyone that you love in a room? You know, certainly, people that we would have loved to have with us, but we're actually having a party this Saturday to incorporate some of those folks. They're celebrating for like a month straight but, yeah, everybody who you love friends, family gathered in a room to celebrate you, the two of you, and it's overwhelming in the most wonderful way, mm-hmm. But yeah, it's certainly not like working a wedding and I saw some of the chaos that went around for my chosen talent members who were women's that love them.
Speaker 2:They put up with with us. But yeah, it was just. You know, I, I think also like as a bridal memory, I was expecting to be like hooten hollard at downtown city, Chicago, but if anybody hasn't seen the photos, I wore a black dress, mm-hmm, which I wanted, something really different than I then I had photographed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was beautiful.
Speaker 2:You know, and I think I kind of like flew under the radar enough that like people weren't sure if I was a bride, they just kind of like let me walk around, which was kind of me. So I felt like I kind of got Gotham City to myself for my wedding night, which was great.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. That's that's really cool. All right, last question yes, you've been a photographer. You still are a photographer, shoots weddings. You've been a bride. You've dealt with a lot of stuff working for OPG. I want to talk customer service a little bit. What would be? You know, you know with OPG you can shoot. You shoot your own weddings, you shoot with OPG. What would be one or two tips you'd give from a customer service standpoint, from the experiences that you've learned as a photographer and Working customer service for OPG and I know that might be a tough question so I'm just gonna keep talking while you're thinking about it.
Speaker 1:But, you know it's, it, is it? You know the communication is there? Is there processes, anything like that? I?
Speaker 2:I think. Actually, a conversation I had earlier with with someone made me think about this and this is something I've kind of always said when it comes to OPG, from my standpoint as a talent member, as a former talent member to my role now like and I know a lot of you that that are listening are our talent, you know that are out there shooting every day, and I think you know, when it comes to customer service, what's important to me is not only the customer service for the couple, but the customer service that you know. My responsibility is to you as the talent members, and I always try to put myself in both envelopes, you know, to understand that experience as a whole. And I would always say I think you can take this in life as it is. You get in, you get out of it what you put into it. Right, as OPG is an organization. We're here to help you, we're here to guide you, we're here to coach you. We, we want to talk to you, we want to hear from you, we want to help you know, solve any problems that you might be having on the talent side as one of our you know, end-users, clients per se. You know, because you are utilizing us in that way, but also for for my, for the clients that we work with. You know, what we do is art and is subjective and you know, while you try very hard to please everyone, you can't please everyone and that's just not the reality of life. Someone hasn't figured out. Let me know.
Speaker 2:I want to know, um, but I think you know, knowing that and and even from a talent standpoint I'll say, knowing that OPG has always had my back when I was out shooting, if something happened with a card malfunctioning, if you know the timeline didn't go right, if whatever the case was, or if I had issues, you know, whatever we, we take very serious the information that we're given about how the day went, so that we can also Advocate for our talent when it comes to our client experience and also, you know, our clients, if there's something that we can do, whether it's Editing their photos in a different way or helping them, you know, create composites of formal photos that just simply didn't happen that day. It doesn't mean that it was our talents Um mistake, it was just listen. As a bride, I know there were combinations that I wanted to have taken on my wedding day and they just didn't happen for whatever reason. So I really try to strive that we think outside of the box and think about solutions that work In in every aspect.
Speaker 2:While we can't go back and redo a day, there's a lot of things that we can do to serve our customers and our clients and even all of you that are listening for your own businesses. Just always Go that extra mile as much as you can be kind. Kindness does matter and it goes a long way. The day of the wedding they always say you know people won't remember what you say, but they'll remember. They'll remember how you made them feel and I really do believe that that's true.
Speaker 2:Just be kind. I think you know if we can all come from that point Forward as we go through everything that we've just been through with cove it over the last couple years, and Kindness matters, I think that's. That's the biggest customer service takeaway.
Speaker 1:Hmm, I like that a lot. I can't. Let's leave it there. Kindness matters. Well, I appreciate you coming on today. I know that we've been going back and forth about doing this for the longest time, so I'm really excited and I'm glad that we put it off now, because I definitely wanted to talk about your wedding and and Congratulations again and, you know, thank you for being on this episode.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, that'll wrap it up for this, this episode of success stories. I'm gonna be reaching out to some of you for some more episodes I'd love to have you on. If you come out, you get a $25 B&H gift card as a way to say Thank you. That should at least pay some of the taxes that you would spend. It be an age, but hey, listen, every little bit of help. So thank you again for listening and we'll catch you on the next episode. Take care everyone. All right, that'll do it for this episode featuring OPG's best of the best. Would you like to be featured in an upcoming episode or do you have a suggestion for somebody you'd like to hear from in our community? Please email me. Jake. Group with two peas at Orion photo group calm. That's Jake. Group at Orion forum group calm. I look forward to hearing from you and hearing your suggestions. We hope that you enjoyed this episode and I look forward to hearing from you and your story. That's it for now. We'll see you on the next episode. Have a great day.
