Rising Stars: Meet Roman Studios

Today we’d like to introduce you to Roman Studios – Cristina & Richard Roman.

Hi, Cristina (for Richard & Cristina :), can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to today?
We started in Los Angeles with Richard working in cartoon animation with his family’s business, Film Roman, which produced The Simpsons & King of the Hill, among other well-known shows. On the side, Richard had been pursuing photography, a love he had since childhood. He was particularly drawn to the creativity of rap music. He was blessed with opportunities to photograph some & coming rap stars, most notably Tupac, SnoopDog, and Dr. Dre, too short. Richard then began working for The Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, where he found another genre of photography that he became fascinated with – fashion. Cristina is self-taught in graphic design & discovered her niche in small occasion projects. After starting a family, we both felt that Los Angeles was no longer where we wanted to be. So, being adventurous souls, we threw a dart at a map & landed in Eugene, Oregon, where we started a photography & design studio. Our focus has been wedding & lifestyle, which allowed us to incorporate Richard’s creative style for fashion into some breathtaking wedding portraits. Cristina soon jumped in with her love for photography & passion for anything involving people & creativity. She also continued with her design work focusing on wedding invitations & paper goods. After 17 years of a successful studio in Oregon, we once again threw the dart at the map, and we are now pivoting our business back to music & fashion & taking it to Nashville.

We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
As for many boutique businesses, Covid was tough on Roman Studios. Most of our weddings & events were canceled. When your usual business flow comes to an abrupt halt, you have to turn on the brainstorming & figure out how to navigate again. We had to rethink what makes us tick. Are we still passionate about what we do? Do we still enjoy it, or has it become just a job? As a married couple & business partners, our foundation has always been our faith. So, we took it to God in prayer with this question mark over our business. Was there a new path God had for us? We came away realizing we couldn’t give up photography & design because, at our core, we genuinely love what we do. The Art of creating Art brings joy even when you have to work extra hard to make it bring in the money. Then there is the “people side.” It is so much more than the camera & the skill. We love the connection it brings about with our clients. It is an opportunity to get to know, share our faith, to encourage & show people how amazing they are. It is the most wonderful thing to turn your camera around for the client & get this gut reaction of awe at how their persona/their family/their connection has been captured.

So, through prayer & reflection, we realized it was time for a shift. Richard started out photographing Rap & Fashion. We have always incorporated some of those styles into our weddings. We began pursuing more sessions that were fashion & entertainment-related – modeling, actors’ headshots, musicians -industries in which confidence can run low, where self-doubt can creep in, and areas where people need to be encouraged. The idea of working in those industries again was exciting! Plus, we realized that there would still be excellent opportunities for people’s connections.

Now, how do you market that? Social media is the standard of the day, but it plagues me in how to implement it effectively. The trends seem to come & go quickly. You are already behind the times when you think you have it figured out. Despite the frustrations, there have been some social media successes. I have learned that we don’t need to sound & look like everyone else. We don’t need to lip-sync, dance, or point to handwritten signs. We could, but it is not authentically us. It would just be trying to imitate & confirm, which doesn’t feel good. We are much more comfortable sharing from the heart about what we know from artist to artist, married couple to engaged couple, experienced parents to new parents, and encouragement to the discouraged. When we consciously come from that place of authenticity, the response is much better!

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Our primary emphasis has been Weddings. As the storytellers of the greatest day of a couple’s life, our desire is not only to capture incredible images but also to give our couples a fantastic experience. This life commitment can quickly become overwhelming for an engaged couple. Part of our job is easing those concerns first by just listening. We want to hear about their lives, who they are, how they met & the details of the proposal. (A good proposal story always gets me!) Once couples become our clients, we intentionally create opportunities to spend a lot of time with them. Whether dreaming up their wedding stationery or meeting to construct their wedding day itinerary, we relish that time in creating connection. One of our favorite parts of the getting-to-know-each-other process is the Engagement Session. People get nervous about being photographed. -especially the grooms for some reason. So, well before the shoot itself, we plan it out with them – we go over their ideas, the style, the clothing, the location. Then on the day of the shoot, we walked, talked, laughed, hung out & got some amazing photos along the way. By the time we get to the wedding day, we are old pals. When we meet to show them the Engagement images, we also start the invitation process, which I am privileged to work on. The invitations are the Guest’s first preview of the wedding day, so they must be unique. Four weeks from the wedding date, we meet for the big reveal! We love this part too. It is so fun to reminisce & relive the wedding day with our clients. Our greatest blessings are the bonds that we have made with our clients, from new friendships to incredible acts of kindness and even being asked to be the Godparents to their children. We cherish all of our client-friends.

So, now we can also apply our business model of getting to know our clients as people & build more than just a photographer/client relationship. We want to create a Genuine Rapport. I read the word “rapport” & felt a little flutter of excitement: “A close and harmonious relationship in which the people or groups concerned understand each other’s feelings or ideas and communicate well.” Exactly! I capitalized on that because it is key to our way of doing business. Now that we are pivoting our business, we have decided to scale back the number of Weddings per season. Fewer Wedding clients will mean giving more time & attention to the clients we take on. But it will also give us the space to pour our hearts into this adventure entertainment industry with our photography & design. We are incredibly excited to start on a specific new aspect of our business, recreating art prints of Richard’s Ol’ Skool rap artist photos.

What was you like growing up?
Richard grew up in the San Fransisco bay area, while I grew up in Wichita, Kansas. Richard had a camera in hand at an early age. I was a drama queen participating in anything that put me on a stage. We both ended up in Los Angeles. Richard was the Director of Operations at the family studio, which produced animated shows like The Simpsons, Garfield & Friends, and King of the Hill. I moved out to LA at 17 years old to be an actress. Some years later, when I was waiting tables (as most actresses do), Richard happened to be at the restaurant breaking up with his then-girlfriend. Amid his break-up speech, someone else caught his eye. Days later, he came back to meet the waitress, but she had since moved to another restaurant. Months passed & he found the waitress at a new restaurant. Now that our paths had finally crossed, we were like magnets that repelled each other. The first date was a disaster which ended with me slamming his car door while he couldn’t squeal his tires fast enough to get away. Somehow, seven months later, we went on our “second 1st date.” It was pure magic & we were together from that point on. Though on our wedding day, my Mom reminded me of my words after that first date, “I will never go out with that jerk again!” I thank God, almost daily, that I did go out with Richard again. We are 25 years deep in this marriage in which we are constantly changing & constantly being given a chance to grow even more as individuals, which pulls us even closer together as a couple.

Along our path, we have had so many people tell us how blessed we are to work together as husband and wife. We do feel lucky. It is not always easy. We have creative and personal differences, but our grounding is in God. Our faith is our accountability always to come back & seek resolution, to move past grievances so we can get back to the good stuff of life. With every low valley, we know that the next peak is coming & it is always higher than the last one.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.roman-studios.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/romanstudios/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RomanStudiosRS/

Image Credits
Roman Studios