What do you enjoy most about photography?
Vitaliy: I love the moment when everything comes together and you get "the shot". Knowing that you clicked the shutter at just the right moment with just the right expressions and just the right light is a good feeling. And to deliver those moments to the couple and see their reaction brings it all full circle and it leaves you feeling fulfilled as a photographer.
Candace: I enjoy helping to create a moment. When the camera comes out, it is hard for most people, myself included, to feel natural and comfortable in front of the camera. I like to be a part of creating a genuine moment with real emotion so our couples walk away feeling good about themselves when they see their photos and have fond memories of their experience with us.
What do you love most about being part of the wedding industry?
As a photographer, it's very easy to feel isolated. It's just the two of us each day. We don't have other employees, no company parties. But when the wedding day rolls around, you are part of a team of professionals all working together to create the best memories for a couple on their wedding day.
I recently discovered on social media that a wedding planner/designer I had the pleasure of meeting this past fall was flying to another state to surprise her clients in person with a mock up of their wedding bouquet. She had arranged it with the couple's wedding photographer to deliver the bouquet at their engagement session. I couldn't believe what I was reading. These two individuals, Rhi from Hey Gorgeous Events and Shalyn from Love The Nelsons, made the wedding industry even better with this collaboration surprise. They not only made this couple's wedding experience unforgettable, but they raised the bar for fellow wedding professionals like myself to likewise surprise my clients with unforgettable memories. It makes me honored to be a part of a community serving people in such meaningful ways.
How would you describe Pictilio's style?
There are different styles that photographers label themselves as, such as, "lifestyle" or "fine art" or "photojournalistic", but I'm always hesitant to give our work any of these labels. During the course of a wedding day, we can incorporate all three of these elements into how and what we shoot. Instead of shooting with a particular style in mind, we try to shoot with three words in mind: light, emotion and fun. We look for natural light that is both flattering on our clients and the image itself. We work to draw out true emotions from our clients. And lastly, we want our clients to walk away feeling like they had a lot of fun during their experience with us.
Your tagline is "in the business of making love"...can you explain what that means?
That is hilarious! And I can totally see why you would think that's our tagline. I guess in some ways, it's our website's tagline. I don't recall how we first came up with the idea. As the writer of the business, I'll claim it as my idea because I love playing with words. But I think it was our amazing web designer Peter Gurry of Gurry Design who featured it on our home page. The minute I saw the mock up, I knew it was perfect. Statistics say that you have roughly 3 seconds to capture the attention of a new visitor to your website. I knew this would do the trick! We then decided to incorporate it into our intro video.
What does it mean? It's kind of two fold. The literal meaning could be that we are in the business of making love because we are husband and wife after all. But that could get awkward for some people. So, the play on words is that we want to make love with the work and art that we produce. We want people to be more in love after their interaction with us whether in person or on our blog.
The real tagline for our business is "Your Love. In Focus." This too was a play on words. As photographers, our cameras will naturally "focus" on and capture a couple's love for each other. But also, at our core, we want to motivate couples to focus on their relationship leading up to the wedding day and long after.
