2018 Review
November 17th, 2018 - Muskoka (can you believe we had 3-4 feet of snow at the cottage in November?!)
With 2018 coming to an end, it’s time for us to share our year end review…
We’re happy to say that this year was filled with a lot more ups than downs (unlike like last year) and I think, all in all, we came out of it really well! Some pretty damn exciting things happened to us all personally this year- Hannah’s engagement!!!!!!! Stef + Ethan officially getting their own place together, no major biking crashes for Ethan- amongst so many great professional things too- networking more than we ever have before, shooting 2 incredible styled shoots, and working with seriously the greatest clients we’ve ever had! In retrospect there are always things that we wish we could do differently, change, or not do entirely, but looking back on how much we’ve grown and how much we’ve better ourselves (professional, personally, mentally, physically, you name it) it’s safe to say that despite some small things, 2018 was a great success for us.
There’s a lot that’s going to be happening come 2019 but for now we each have shared a few parting thoughts on this year, a goal or two for next year, and some of our favourite photos that we’ve taken throughout 2018- check it out below!
HANNAH
I truly believe that 2018 has been our best year yet, both artistically and professionally speaking. This year we were able to find our aesthetic style as photographers- and we’ve been lucky to have clients reach out to us and hire us based on our shooting style. It’s such an amazing feeling to read an inquiry, and have clients write “we love how natural and candid your photos feel” because that’s exactly what we aim to achieve every single time we shoot! We played around this year a lot with different editing styles, and I’m proud to say that we’ve been able to redo our portfolio to reflect our personality as a business. We have such a strong and cohesive body of work that we’re going to enter 2019 with, and I’m so excited for all the new couples and families that we’re going to be working with next year!
We created the most amazing relationships with our clients in 2018- and we walked away feeling stronger and more confident after every shoot or event we had. We pushed ourselves out of our comfort zone and we were able to work on TWO creative styled shoots together! On the first shoot, Stef had to work solo (go Stef go!) as Ethan and I weren’t able to be there for it. The second shoot with all 3 of us working together was such an amazing learning experience. The only time previously that we all worked together on a shoot was at G+M’s wedding in Greece. I did spend most of my time co-ordinating, directing, and styling the shoot- but we were able to create such a comfortable rhythm working together by the end of the day. I can’t wait to collaborate with more vendors, businesses, and clients in 2019.
Next year is going to be pretty busy and probably surreal, but I’m for once I actually feel excited about the future instead of intimidated by it. Working with my two closest friends has been an absolute dream up to this point, and I think we’ve been able to get past our toughest struggles. I think one of my big goals for 2019 is definitely being more confident, especially when telling people in person what we do for a living and how much we love our job. I can’t tell you how many clients we’ve had that we’ve met through friends or family members. Word of mouth is so important for us- so socializing, meeting new people, and creating connections to build a larger client base is definitely what I’m going to aim for!
STEF
I don’t know how to properly explain this, but something clicked for me this year. Since we started shooting I’ve always separated my personal/editorial shooting style from how I shoot weddings and since I shot more weddings than editorial/personal work, that light + bright style is just how I started to shoot everything. I liked it, I was happy with the photos I produced and delivered (and most importantly, so were our clients) but honestly I didn’t love it. It felt like something was missing. After our first styled shoot is when things changed for me and I think because it was a creative something inside of me said ‘shoot this how you want to shoot this, not how you should shoot this’. After seeing my photos from that shoot, physically seeing that yes I can shoot darker, I can shoot in harsh light, or I can shoot below 2.8 and still create beautiful photos I was like, yes this is it, this is what was missing! Since then I’ve been muchhhh happier and much more confident with my work; I don’t shy away from a dark room anymore or spending more one-on-one time with our couples, or even with using flash photography! I’ve talked about this with a couple of other photo friends and it seems to be something that they have felt too so it’s comforting to know that it’s normal to be in this kind of photo rut.
Other than that though this year has been pretty heckkkkkin’ great! We shot 2 beautiful styled shoots, seriously killed all of our weddings and engagements, we shot a lot of different events, and I think most importantly: we worked with people who were genuinely happy to be with us over our price point. I also feel like I’ve gained a clearer direction on how I want to shoot, on what I want our business to be, and I’ve become much more comfortable with presenting Rosewood as a reflection of ourselves (before we were really trying to fit into a different niche of wedding photography that was not a good representation of us). All in all, it’s been a year of some very important and positive growth.
I don’t think there’s anything in 2019 that I’m more excited for than Hannah + Yiannis wedding!!!!!!!!!! and the vacation that Ethan and I are going to take afterwards but since they’ll be happening together I’m bundling it as the one thing I’m most looking forward to. I’m anxious to spend the next little while filling up our calendar, putting together another styled shoot, and really just diving back into work after the holidays! As a team we have a small list of business/financial goals for the year but one of my big personal goals is to take it easy on instagram and not sweat the small stuff- missing more than 1 day of posting, not sharing enough on stories, forgetting to queue our FB posts- the world won’t end… but I know I’ll for sure feel this way sometimes so someone please remind me that’s it ok to not be active 24/7!
ETHAN
Coming into 2018 I was very excited to start shooting again after missing out on most of 2017. Stef and I shoot freelance editorial work which started early in 2018 and it was great to be shooting and producing work that was even more cohesive and stronger than previous years. I was hoping that we would keep that same momentum and transfer those good vibes and energy over to our Rosewood work as well and, without fail, it did!
Our styled shoot with Kylie and Alex at the Campbell House (coming to our blog in the new year!) was one of my favourite shoots this year; we put together a well thought out and well executed shoot and had a ton of fun while doing it all! This also ended up being a quasi-engagement shoot for K+A which made it even more exciting, and by the time that we shot their wedding in September it felt like we were all just having a ton of fun together! I was looking forward to their big day very much; their large but intimate wedding was perfect for my first wedding of the year/first big event since before my injury (crazy right?!)
We shot with Maria + Matt this summer too... Stef and I shot engagement photos with them earlier in the year in Port Credit and that session started off a bit uncomfortable as M+M were both a little (a lot) camera shy, but let’s be real here… who isn’t?! After working our magic and by the time we were done they had fully opened up and were happy to share some PDA, which was great because honestly this is our goal for every shoot- to make people feel comfortable and to give them the best photos of themselves as possible. Their actual wedding was really nice as well, it was the smallest one we shot this year so we were able to work with them intimately and without any chaos, so much so it felt like our time with them slowed down and 3 hours with them turned into 5 or 6 hours!
Without getting into every single shoot of the year I’ll make mention about 1 more: Tess + Ryan’s wedding at Camp Manitou. This to me in a lot of ways was a quintessential Rosewood wedding, it had a very personal touch and brought together a lot of friends and family (about 120) but still managed to feel very intimate. We were running around the camp most of the day capturing all of the guests having fun and enjoying ourselves and then spent the evening nestled into the mess hall with everyone celebrating. It was by far the most tiring event of the year, but it left me feeling incredibly fulfilled, and reminded me why I love doing this.
If there’s one big goal I have for the new year, it’s to walk away from every wedding/event/shoot feeling like I did at T+Rs- fulfilled, confident, and happy that this is our job! 2019 is going to be great for us and we can’t wait to show you all what we’ve got!
