Daily Inspiration: Meet Katie Luna

Today we’d like to introduce you to Katie Luna.

Hi Katie, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Poppy and Vine, as a wedding photography entity, began as an accident. I always had a camera on me growing up, taking photos of almost everything, and this eventually led to me starting a pretty unofficial graduation photo business when I got to college. I ended up remaining in my college town for a few years after graduation, and those same clients I’d taken photos of years prior returned to town to get married, asking me to photograph their weddings, too! I was in a stage of career transition at the time– I realized what I had studied in college was not my passion and was hoping to take my career in a completely different, more creative direction. I photographed my first wedding, one of my life’s best days. My eyes were opened to what I wanted to do! That was when Poppy and Vine were truly born. Joseph, my now husband and business partner, and I had just started dating around this time, and he became wildly interested in my new venture as a photographer. He asked one day if he could be part of this with me. After teaching him the basic mechanics of using a camera, I brought him to an engagement session with me to practice. Looking at the photos afterward, I was in awe of his natural eye for composition and ability to make our couple comfortable. He was “hired” on the spot. We’ve been a husband and wife team ever since, working together to photograph hundreds of weddings over the years.

Would it have been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The beauty of owning a business includes the struggles we, as owners, go through and the constant learning experience it offers. When I began Poppy and Vine, I had little training in anything about business. I have an engineering degree, which makes efficiently running the back end of the business natural for me, but other areas were completely new. I was on a crash course to learn how to market my business, build a website, manage my accounting, and deliver a high-end client experience—finding fellow business owners with similar priorities and goals as mine has been such a cornerstone to Poppy and Vine’s success. Collaborating with others, sharing referrals, and learning from my peers’ experiences have done an incredible job of smoothing out the bumpy road, often with spur-of-the-moment twists and turns, that we endure as business owners.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
We are wedding photographers, like many other Phoenix area creatives. What sets us apart from the literal hundreds of photographers in the Valley is the unique experience our couples receive by working with Joseph and me. Over the years, through lots of trial and error, we’ve developed what I believe to be an incredible and personalized client experience, and that is what I am most proud of. After Joseph and I married, we realized that traditional weddings can make the couple feel like they are putting on a show for their guests. We hated feeling hustled from photo op to photo op on our wedding day, and when it was over, we reflected and realized we couldn’t truly enjoy it. This is just how the traditional American wedding went. We knew there had to be a better way of doing this. Fortunately, we married in the early stages of Poppy and Vine, so we could use our wedding experience to mold what we offered to our couples. This was the foundation of what we have today–Our photography style leans heavily toward the documentary, a candid approach that is becoming more popular now. For as much of the wedding as possible, we step back and approach the day as flies on the wall, covering all that happens with a photojournalistic approach. Fabricating moments “for the photos” is just something we refuse to do. Before each wedding, we sit down with all our couples and discuss what they value most during each part of their wedding day. No one is forced to take a single staged portrait if they don’t want to. We work to understand our couples’ visions for their day and then arrive and capture them accordingly. We treat no two weddings the same way and do our best to avoid giving our couples a “copy and paste” experience. When we arrive at our couples’ wedding days, we are already pretty good friends with them. Planned touch points and meetings help us get to know each other so they are comfortable around us and in front of our cameras when their day arrives. We are so proud to call so many of our past clients our friends now, and befriending these incredible people is our leading motive as we continue to build this business!

Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
I love seeing the wedding industry head in a direction that is so much more focused on the couple and what they want to do rather than following a cookie-cutter format for how a wedding day is “supposed” to look, feel, and transpire. With the rise of adventure elopements, where couples can do whatever they want on their wedding days, I see a more intentional, couple-centric trend even in the traditional wedding sphere. I am so excited to see how this further develops. I also love the current trend of turning a wedding day into a whole weekend experience. Past married couples realized that, on a day when everyone they love is gathered in one place, they didn’t have adequate time to soak in the moment with everyone present. By throwing more of a long weekend celebration, couples get to spend quality time with each other and their loved ones, and different kinds of activities are also thrown in!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://poppyandvinevisual.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/poppyandvinephoto/