Today we’d like to introduce you to Christy Tyler.
Christy, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I moved to Chicago to get a degree in Commercial Photography from Harrington College of Design after I finished my undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. During my time in photography school I was introduced to James (my now husband) through a mutual friend. At the time he was managing a camera store in the city and I was in my 2nd year of photography school. When I graduated I was doing commercial & advertising photography work while also working a full time job at a law firm (to pay the bills). A year into that in 2008 I shot my first wedding – even though at the time I really was insistent I was not a wedding photographer and was not interested in doing that type of photography work. (Boy was I wrong!) James and I were married in the spring of 2009. The business continued to grow organically from there and I started to get busier with each passing year. James joined the business in 2010 and we took it full time (quit the law firm job!) in 2011. We’ve been doing this full-time together ever since and truly love every minute of it. We feel so blessed to get to work together and to have a career that is so fulfilling and life enhancing! (I mean, working with people celebrating beautiful moments in their lives is a pretty awesome gig!)
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I think the hardest thing for us is finding a balance between our business and our married life. It can get easy to just start to feel like business partners / co-workers during really busy seasons of the year, but we have gotten better at working to make time for each other and our marriage outside of our business. (Though it has been a constant adjustment – especially once we added kids to the mix!)
We’d love to hear more about your business.
We are James and Christy Tyler, a husband and wife wedding photography team based out of Chicago (but we love to travel too, and used to do that a LOT before we welcomed our twin boys into the world in 2016)!
We love what we do and are so honored to work with the world’s BEST clients. (We’re not biased, I swear.) We believe this is about so much more than just showing up on a couple’s wedding day and snapping some photos! This is about the entire experience – from the moment they first email us until they’re holding their wedding album in their hands and beyond. We only work with clients who we would want to hang out with in real life (and usually do), because we believe the relationship people have with their photographers makes or breaks their images!
We genuinely LOVE our clients, and are their friends (not just another vendor) by the time their wedding arrives. Because of that there is an ease about the entire experience and we are able to show them as they truly are together in their images. No fake smiles, no awkwardness, no forced or cheesy poses… just beautiful, honest moments.
We also think it sets us apart that we are a spouse team because we have only ever shot weddings together! We know how to anticipate where the other is during key moments, and can give each other a “look” across the room and know what the other is trying to tell us! Our styles really complement one another and we love that we get to be a part of these love stories week in and week out. It is such a good reminder of the vows we made to one another and truly gives us SO MUCH JOY to be a part of it all!
What were you like growing up?
I was a pretty goofy kid. I loved to be a ham in front of a camera and loved making people laugh (I still do – haha)! I’m also pretty classic Type A (which works well when running a business, I think!) and was super into anything art related… music, dance, theater, photography, ceramics – you name it. If it was tied to the arts in some way – I was always intrigued/involved. I was also incredibly active/antsy! I was involved in a variety of sports my entire life and danced from the time I was in 5th grade through college.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.christytylerphotography.com
- Email: christy@christytylerphotography.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christytylerphotography/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChristyTylerPhotography/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/christy-tyler-photography-chicago
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