Captured. Photography

Hi, my name is Haleigh Wehr - I actually heard about this site a while back - pretty sure it was on TV... I never really looked into it - but it was always in the back of my mind..So I decided to google it this afternoon...

All through high school I wanted to be a photographer - I started doing photography sessions for people when I was a senior in high school (2010) I had always wanted to be photographer for some big magazine and do more nature-like photography...such as national geographic ect. ( yes big dreams ) haha.. Portrait photography almost bored me.. I felt as if i couldnt show my own personal style through my pictures - one thing that always pulled me into taking nature-like photography was when I was in middle school - i always ran around with my little sony cyber shot - we went camping a lot when I was a kid - and one day my dad and I were on a walk - and the sun was starting to set.. and he said to me, "hey take a picture of that sunset" and i asked him why he wanted me to do that - and he said back to me "well you will never see something like that again, the sunset is never the same" those words always are in the back of my head to this day - because it is so true.. I was accepted to MCAD for photography and advertising when I applied in high school - I made a portfolio that I worked really hard at.... I remember being at the grocery store working and my mom called me at the store and told me I got a letter from MCAD.. she couldnt wait for me to open it! I couldnt either! :) When i got home i found out i was accepted to go to the art school of my dreams!!! I was so pumped... Not thinking about all the money that I would end up having to put into going there out of my own pocket... my mom has 5 other kids who are younger than me - and her paying for college was never an option... and i didnt want her to have the debt of me going to college anyways.. I decided not to go. My mom was pretty disapointed but she also understood my reasoning of not wanting to pay 40,000 a year to go to a school that was out of state.. My dad passed when I was 16 and he was always someone that pushed me to do what i wanted to do...so after i decided not to go to college... i took a step back and told my mom i didnt want anything to do with photography anymore... i just wanted to go out on my own, get my own place, get a job, pay my own bills, and be proud of it. So thats exactly what I did. I started working at a screen printing place in carroll iowa- i wasnt a huge fan of working there - but i was pretty excited that i started out getting paid $9 an hour which was definately enough money for me to make it... i felt pretty good about myself. I worked side by side with a girl who was about 10 years older than me..we got to become pretty good friends - so she learned more about me as time went on ...she found out i did photography... just through chatting throughout the day...and asked me to take her wedding pictures... at first i said NO WAY! I didnt feel comfortable with that at all... and she hadnt even seen any of my work - but for some reason she just trusted me.. i ended up doing her wedding photos and in 2011 i had 7 weddings lined up - thanks to her... then i started doing more and more photography on the side with also working full time.. i got busier and busier and soon i went full time doing photography! I was so excited! I was doing fairly well for myself at the age of 20 - couldnt save a lot of money but i could pay my bills. and that was happiness to me. but as time went on I became worn down - doing 15+ sessions a week at $30 a session was getting the best of me .. i felt like i was working only to pay my bills and that i didnt have anything to show for it... so i got a job at a bridal shop - I moved to wall lake iowa - and started working on a studio in lake view iowa - in october of last year - i put 5,000+ into the buidling - it was a terrible looking place to start with but my landlord said that he would only charge me $200.00 a month and if anything went wrong i had to fix it and i had free range to do with whatever i wanted - so i thought that was great! and he was a nice guy and so forth so i went ahead and took money out of my savings and made the buidling look nice and suitable for a studio - i had a ton of help from friends and family with doing most of the work ourselves... in november of this year - someone else bought the building... the new owner is now planning to raise my rent to 450.00 a month and i still would have to pay for everything myself such as heater problems, electric/propane.. so it is getting to be pretty spendy! I have looked at other places to rent around the area but they are all in pretty bad condition- and i dont want to start over with what i just did a year ago and end up getting screwed over with having to pay double in rent a year later... :( I am having a baby in May and planning on going back to full time photography so that way i can stay home during the day with our baby - and work at night with my sessions... I would love to build a studio at our home - but with a baby coming and all the home bills its tough to get something going.. I would really love to get someting started... so i thought this would be a good place to start and see if it was worth a shot.. if any of you would like to check out some of my work - you can check out my facebook page Captured. photography by Haleigh Wehr  ( there are also before and after pictures of my current studio on my facebook page - it is in one of my albums called "my heart and joy" more towards the bottom of all my other picture albums) - or my website, www.haleighwehrphotography.zenfolio.com Thank you for your time for reading through my story... I appreciate it.

Haleigh