Category: Our Dreams

Our Today Show Dream! …. so close!

Dreaming, Our Dreams // 27th November 2012

If you have been following along with us from day one of our business, (I know, that is a long time!) you know that we have this dream to be on the Today Show! Over the past few years, every time we write out our goals- there is something to do with being on the Today Show included. Those goals/dreams have evolved from wanting to be a producer, to shooting the Today Show wedding (which I am pretty sure they don’t do anymore ;( ), to most recently, sharing a super fun and easy Thanksgiving centerpiece idea!

A few weeks ago we saw that The Today Show was in search for Thanksgiving Centerpiece ideas. We figured we could whip something up and send them a photo… so we did just that. At the very last minute when the deadline for submissions was about 10 minutes away, we sent them a photo of our centerpiece. Let me tell you, at the time, my stomach was in knots. I was excited, nervous, doubtful, yet incredibly hopeful! I was thinking, “what are we thinking?!?” and then the next moment I was thinking “this could be our chance to be on The Today Show!” I was dreaming out loud and it was such a crazy feeling.

We really didn’t have anything to lose… but for some reason I delayed actually taking the action to submit the photo. I was so nervous about it for some reason! Honestly, it took me back to the days of starting our business. It was scary.

We hit submit…. And then I held my phone close praying that the Today Show would call immediately. Haha. It didn’t quite happen like that. The timetable was short, so we knew that if we heard from them we would hear within a few days. Every time my phone rang, that knot in my stomach came back. My heart would skip a beat. Every time I answered the phone… it was not the Today Show! Haha. Seriously, I was at the mall with Ryan and saw NY pop up on my phone and I literally screamed. ;) When I answered… it was the wrong number. :( lol.

HOWEVER, a few short days later, at the point that I actually started to come to the realization that it just wasn’t our time to be on The Today Show, we received a call. We were in the car on our way to NC when NY popped up on my phone again. I was driving, so Ryan picked it up. When he said it was NY, once again, my heart started beating faster. He answered and about 10 seconds into the call made it clear that THE TODAY SHOW was on the line!!! ;) AHHHH! ;) Seriously- how amazing is that?!?! They told us that we were in the Top 5 Finalists and that they would let us know by the next day if we made it to the Top 3 and would be invited to the show. Ohh my word!!… yes, there was a lot of screaming going on! I probably should not have been driving at that point! ;) I just couldn’t believe that we were so close and there was a chance that our dream could actually become a reality. Very Soon!

Unfortunately, we received an email from a producer the next day stating that they chose “a different direction” for the segment. Yes, a part of me wanted to cry. But, over the next few days a lot became rather clear to us! This was definitely a teachable moment that God had planned for us! ;) Among other realizations, it taught us that, yes, honestly, you can do anything that you put your mind to! We were so so so close- and that little tease just made us more and more confident that one day (if it is meant to be and the timing is right) we will make our way to The Today Show.

More Than “Just” Photographers – Inspiration for an AMAZING Life

Dreaming, Our Dreams // 13th November 2012

Over the last few weeks, we have fielded many questions and heartfelt comments from some of our closest friends about our business and our new brand. (ie. Why did you drop photography from your name? When I go to your website, I can’t even tell it is a photographers website. etc.) All of these questions have come from their hearts and have ended up in great conversation!

The truth is, a lot of thought went into the Liz and Ryan brand and new site. When we went through the rebranding process with Making Brands Happen, we were challenged to dig deep and we came up with a few realizations that lead us to where we are today with a website that helps us achieve our goals of being more than “just” photographers:

1. The thing we LOVE most about being “photographers” is the ability to make a difference in people’s lives. Yes, we LOVE to provide amazing photographs that our couples and clients can cherish for years and generations to come. However, we even more so love the process. Over the years of owning our own “photography” business, we have realized that the moments we get to spend with our clients are cherished moments. It is usually a few hours they have given of their time to us and it is our responsibility to take those few hours and make them magical. We have realized that we have the power in those few hours to really impact their lives… and THAT is our love.

2. We have the ability to make a difference in the lives of others everyday! Our blog provides an online platform that gives us the opportunity to reach out and share a little bit of inspiration to more people than we could ever imagine photographing.

3. We are unique and we have something special to share! We are 27 and 28 (soon to be 29 with a big b-day for Ryan coming up! WAHOO!) years old. We are happily married for over 5 years (yes, we got married young! ;) ) and we wake up more in love than ever each and every day. We have worked the corporate jobs that we thought would make us successful and after realizing there was so much more to life than sitting at a desk doing work that we were not passionate about, we took our careers into our own hands. We took the time to dream and with God’s help, we created our business. We have taken HUGE leaps and risks. All of these things, we have done with passion and love together. These decisions and actions have lead us to this point in our lives where we feel INCREDIBLY blessed.

We love living the unconventional life. We love taking time to dream and then following our hearts to make those dreams a reality. We love date nights and entertaining with our friends. We love finding new recipes and challenging ourselves to make them… together. We love seeing something in a store and thinking, “we can make that”… and then actually doing it. We love being grateful for every single day that we have been given. THIS is our AMAZING LIFE.

4. Living an AMAZING LIFE (whatever that may look like to each individual) is certainly something that everyone strives to achieve and we can help people get there. We have the ability through our everyday interaction with our online friends and in person with our clients to provide inspiration and encouragement to seek out that Amazing Life… to think about what that looks like and make it happen!

5. By sharing examples of living an AMAZING LIFE, we have the ability to inspire other people to live their own AMAZING lives.

It is our goal with our new brand and http://lizandryan.com to do just that. Yes, we are still photographers and we LOVE that experience of capturing AMAZING LIVES. God has given us a talent to help illustrate our couples and clients storybooks of their amazing lives and we are honored to be able to do that. However, we never see ourselves as “just” photographers.

We have a passion for love and love stories. When we photograph our couples, it is ALWAYS our goal to help them feel more in love than ever. We want them to wake up everyday feeling incredibly blessed. We want them to look at their photographs every single day and remember that exact moment it was taken and the AMAZING love they share.

We have a passion to seek out happiness and what brings people happiness. By sharing things that bring us happiness (cooking and DIYing), we hope to spark a passion and interest in others to find what makes them happy.

We have a passion to be surrounded by amazing people and to share our love for entertaining with them. Any excuse we can come up with to pull our creative spirit together to host a party and share a good time with our friends and family… we are on it! ;) It is true that surrounding yourself by incredible people makes you a happier person. AND when you can throw in an excuse to celebrate together… that makes it even better!

So… as you can see, we are passionate about a lot of things! ;) But the overarching theme is that we are passionate about living an AMAZING life and doing everything that we can to inspire others to live their own AMAZING life. We are certainly not “just” photographers, but we believe in the power of inspiration and making this world a better place! Documenting it along the way is one incredible gift we have to share!

If you haven’t seen our promo video yet, be sure to check it out below to learn a little bit more about us and our passion to live a more AMAZING LIFE.

Liz and Ryan: This is Us // Promo Video // by Jeremy Mitchell Cinema on Vimeo

Board of Life Directors, surrounding ourselves by AMAZING people

Dreaming, Our Dreams // 4th October 2012

Earlier this year while we were visiting our good friends Justin & Mary we chatted about the need to have more AMAZING people in our lives. We jokingly said that we needed to create a match.com for small business owners to help us connect with other similar minded people. Although we were joking about this idea, it did spark another idea…

All large businesses and many nonprofits have a Board of Directors. One definition we have heard for a board of directors is a group of people that provides a company with direction and advice. We continued to think on this and thought, why can’t we have a Board of LIFE Directors that would provide us with direction and advice for our LIFE. Why couldn’t we have a Board of LIFE Directors!

Last week, as we were reflecting on our AMAZING Life Manifesto Video: Surround Yourself by Incredible People, we knew we had to turn our idea into a reality.

We came up with a short mission statement to describe our Board of LIFE Directors:

“The goal of our board of life directors is to surround ourselves by amazing people that we can turn to for advice. People that live a similar lifestyle, have similar values, and people that are not afraid to tell us the honest truth when necessary.”

Next, we came up with two simple duties for our board members.

1. Support us and encourage others in living an AMAZING life.
Our lives are short and are not meant to be lived in stress, working jobs we are not passionate about, or living someone else’s dream. As a member of our Board of LIFE Directors you are already living your own AMAZING life, we only ask that you help us to encourage others to do the same. We would love your continued support and feedback on additions to our AMAZING Life Manifesto, ways to improve our message and ideas on how to help others live their own AMAZING life.

2. Provide us with true and honest feedback
In order to grow as a business and a couple we need people that are willing to provide us with true and honest feedback. People that are not afraid to tell us when an idea we think is amazing may actually be off the mark. People that will keep us in check and push us each day to live better, follow our dreams, and never give up. Only with true and honest feedback, will we be able to improve our business, our brand, our message, our life, and the lives of others.

Next, we created a fun little invitation and began inviting our board members:

Currently we have filled half of our board member positions with four AMAZING people. Once we fill out our entire board we plan to ask each member “What does Living an AMAZING life mean to you?” We will then feature each board member and their responses on our blog!

So, this brings us back to the main point of writing this post. We want to encourage everyone to create their own Board of LIFE Directors that will help them to live a more AMAZING life.

Over the weekend, while you are watching the baseball playoffs (let’s go O’s), take the following simple steps to create your own Board:

1. Write out a Mission Statement for your Board. Not sure where to start? Think about what strikes a passion in you, or areas in your life and business in which you need a little extra guidance and craft your Mission Statement around those things.

2. Create a short list of simple duties for your board members. Most people already have super busy lives so be sure to make the duties simple enough that they do not overwhelm your board.

3. Brainstorm a list of people that you would like to have on your board. We hope to have 8 members on our board but you could have 2 or 12. This is your board and there are no rules. Also, you can always add to your board in the future, so don’t worry if you can’t fill all your spots right away.

4. Invite your board members. We created a fun graphic and invited our members via email but feel free to be creative when asking your members to join the board!

For another perspective on creating your own Board of LIFE Directors, be sure to check out Justin and Mary Marantz’s (current members of our board) blog today!

The Making of Our Brand: Our Colors

Dreaming, Our Dreams // 11th September 2012

We thought it would be fun to share with you a little bit of the behind the scenes from the Making of our new brand! As you know, it was about 1 year in the making! ;) YES… that is a REALLY long time! ;) But as with anything that we do, we want it to be as perfect as it can be. (For the record… Ryan is definitely Type A and I fall at about 95% Type A! ;) haha).

When it came time to choosing the colors to go along with our new brand, we struggled! We had an idea of what we wanted, but could not seem to find the “perfect” shade of green or blue. We looked around our house and pointed to objects that had a color we liked. One of us would love it and the other one would not love it as much! ;) This went on for days… if not weeks. We would be walking around the neighborhood, in the middle of a conversation about something completely different and one of us would point to a door or a sign or a trash can ;) and scream out, “wait, what about that color?” If we semi-agreed, we would take a picture with our phones and come back to it later… always finding a reason why it was not perfect.

It came time that we had to make a decision. Emily had finalized our logo design and the colors were the only thing that was holding us up from starting the next phase of our rebrand. I was frustrated… literally on the verge of tears… and Ryan suggested we drop everything and take a day to go shopping. Not necessarily to buy anything- but to surround ourselves by the brands we love in hopes to gain some inspiration! So, we did just that! We took a day trip to Leesburg, VA to check out the outlets: Pottery Barn, Kate Spade, Williams-Sonoma, Restoration Hardware, Le Creuset, JCrew, etc. We walked around the stores with the sole mission of finding colors that spoke to our hearts! We held up kitchen utensils, potholders, shirts, jewelry, dresses… you name it, we explored it! ;) Still not finding exactly what we were looking for.

Until we walked by Kate Spade. From the window I caught a glimpse of a green handbag that made me scream with excitement! ;) I pointed at it… screamed a little ;)… and then looked at Ryan and saw in his eyes that we had some hope. This could be the one! ;) It very well could have been cuteness of the handbag that made me scream… but actually it was the color green. It was crisp and bold… just like we were looking for.

As we wandered around the store with huge smiles on our faces and a bit of excitement knowing what we had just accomplished… Ryan held up a blue wallet from the back of the store that literally made me scream just like the green one! ;) Ahhh… I was always a fan of Kate Spade, but that day I fell in love with excitement! ;) In one store we found exactly what we had been in search of for weeks! The perfect shade of green and blue to accompany the yellow, crisp white, and two shades of gray we had already decided on!

Mission accomplished! ;) And to celebrate, we purchased the blue wallet so we could always remember our color-searching adventures in style! ;)

Enjoy a few of our favorite photos from our phones below.

This is Us – Our AMAZING Promo Video

Dreaming, Our Dreams // 6th September 2012

When we started the process of redesigning our website, we knew we wanted video to have a very strong focus. As you saw yesterday, we plan to post a new Manifesto Video each week, and we have slowly been incorporating bits and pieces of video into our story telling photography sessions (check back later today for a super fun session we just did with our AMAZING friends Jennie and Adam).

So when it came to our promo video, it had to be fit perfectly with our brand and tell the story of us. Yes, we are photographers, but the goal with our site is so much more than that. It is about helping people live an AMAZING life, encouraging people to live their dreams each day, and capturing life’s most AMAZING moments to share with friends and family for generations to come. We wanted our promo video to capture exactly those same ideas. So we started with the idea of having a fun date that included heading to our local farmers market, cooking together, enjoying wine and cupcakes, and just soaking each other in. But enough of me trying to explain the video, check it out for yourselves and leave us a comment to let us know what you think!