Thursday, February 5, 2009

Rae Leytham Photography

Today I am so fortunate to have Rae of Rae Leytham Photography stop by to share with us her work. I met Rae and her husband Wesley at the Southern Weddings launch party. They were so cool when I walked up to them and professed to be a blog stalker!

Lemiga: How did you get started in photography and what made you decide to
start Rae Leytham Photography?

Rae: I took a photography class in college and loved it. My goal was to land a
job in the Forensics field which made sense with a Biology degree. I did
get a Forensics job and eventually became a Forensic Photographer. After
doing that for a few years, I moved into Crime Scene Investigations. I
still had a camera in my hand though! I became friends with a wedding
photographer (she shot Wesley's sister's wedding) and I assisted her at a
few weddings. I basically held her bags, but someone found out and they
needed an inexpensive photographer. I shot the wedding and it was pretty
good. I got the bug for photographing happy moments for a change and it
snow-balled. After shooting weddings for many friends of friends, we
decided to open a real business. Wesley started out as being my assistant,
but he got tired of holding my bags. So, he started learning photography
and cameras and lighting and now he is better than me (did I just write
that?). I quit my job in Forensics because my Photography business had
grown so much and a year later, Wesley quit his job at an Engineering firm.
We have been working side by side for 2 years now and we still love it and
each other!

Lemiga: Where are you based and do you travel to Atlanta? Do you charge travel
fees to shoot in Atlanta?

Rae: Wesley and I are based in Pensacola, Florida. We have family and several
clients we visit in Atlanta, so we are always excited to visit Atlanta. We
do not charge travel fees for Atlanta.

Lemiga: What type of photography services do you offer?

Rae: We love all kinds of photography. Weddings make our world go 'round, but we
love baby and family sessions too. Wesley really likes landscape and
architecture photography, while I prefer Senior sessions. We have been told
that our boudoir sessions are amazing and we certainly have fun with those
too.

Lemiga: What is your favorite part of the wedding day to capture?

Rae: Wesley and I agree on this! We both love it when a bride and groom have a
first look BEFORE their ceremony and they spend at least 30 minutes with us!
It is always just them and us and they have so much fun. Their nerves are
reduced and they have gorgeous photos with no pressure of wanting to go to
the reception. That is really the only time for the whole day that it is
just them. They can talk and laugh and get sexy and romantic...all while we
are capturing it!

Lemiga: What has been the highlight of your career to date?

Rae: There have been so many! We love it when magazines and blogs want to
feature us. We love it when people know us (from our blog) and we don't
know them! But, I think we were most excited when the photo coordinator
from The Knot cold-contacted us and asked for an image to be used in the
Florida fall/winter 2008 edition. She saw it on our blog and wanted to use
it! It is the very last page in the magazine and it is a full page. We had
never submitted anything to The Knot before and were so excited that they
found us!
To see more of their beautiful work check out the Rae Leytham Photography website and blog


3 comments:

Wes and Rae Leytham said...

Awww! Thank you so much for the feature! We are honored to be on your blog and we certainly hope we see more of you in the future!

patsy brown said...

Rae is THE kewlest!!! And so cute too.

Anonymous said...

As a bride whose moments were captured by Rae and Wes, I can easily say they captured everything about our wedding that mattered. Awesome, hands down!