“Let your dreams be greater than your fears and understand that the business side of photography is as important as the creative side.” Those are some words of advice from Elise and Rob Wehmeier of Wehmeier Portraits.
Rob is a photographer and Elise serves as the studio manager. Rob’s passion for photography dates back to the early 1970s, when his family set up a darkroom in the basement for one of his older brothers. Rob learned the black-and-white developing process from his brother. Years later, Rob took a photography class for fun at Valparaiso University, which spurred him to major in photography.
Rob began his full-time photography career in the early 90s doing commercial photography. It wasn’t until his daughter was born in 1998 that he fell in love with family and kids photography. “He started photographing his daughter and her friends and found that he really enjoyed working with children,” the Wehmeiers say.
Elise had always helped with the backend work of the photography business, and decided in 2002 to officially team up with Rob to create a portrait studio. Their business is located in the Chicago suburbs. “Rob is passionate about black and white photography, which stretches back to his early roots of learning photography from [his] older brother in his darkroom in the mid 70s,” say the Wehmeiers. Elise shared she really “enjoys working with our clients and helping them visualize their finished artwork.”
Wehmeier Portraits has been using PhotoBiz for several years. “We can make nearly any change [to our website] we want and at any time of day by simply logging in. We came to realize the value of this accessibility after moving to a different vendor for a custom website. That experience was very frustrating and after nearly a year away, decided to return to PhotoBiz. We are so glad to be back! Customer service is always helpful, and we love all of the features available to us,” they say.
The Wehmeiers also shared that it was “fun” creating their website on the PhotoBiz platform. They “love that in many ways, it is one stop shopping – website, landing pages, blogs, shopping carts, email marketing, forms. And when we want to create a feature we’ve seen elsewhere we can always count on PhotoBiz to help guide us in making it happen.”
Wehmeier Portraits also uses PhotoBiz’s SEO Go service to help with their business. They say they were initially weary of using an SEO service. They were concerned that they might do more harm than good, but PhotoBiz’s SEO Go made them believers. “I felt comfortable using the SEO Go service knowing that they work with countless photographers and that they are experts on the inside details of their web service.” The SEO Go service also provides them with good insight into where they can improve so they can get “seen,” and they appreciate the monthly feedback. “It reminds us to keep working on our blog and other writing, as well as informing us of the improvements that are being made to the site.”
So what’s the future hold for Wehmeier Portraits? “We want to grow our black and white segment and have talked about creating a portrait garden in our backyard. Our kids are now in college and beyond, situating the business to allow time to visit them is important to us.” They are also looking into expanding Rob’s personal projects, using an ultra large format camera to create portraits.
Give us a call at 866.463.7620 to talk about how we can support your photography business and experience the amazing support the Wehmeiers rave about!
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