Check Out Kate Holt’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kate Holt.

Alright, thank you for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us how you got started?
As a young child, I was fascinated with photography and how images can tell a whole story or convey emotions without words. When I was old enough to be responsible with equipment, my father gave me a film canon camera he had purchased as a college student in the 70s. He taught me how to load film and properly set the exposure and focus. I began carrying the camera everywhere I went, practicing good composition and increasing my skill. I’ll never forget what it was like recovering the prints of the first roll of film I shot. It was both exhilarating and frustrating, or as you can imagine, not every shot was exactly “magazine” worthy! In high school, I was fortunate and landed an internship at a relatively Pristine Pi newspaper, where I learned the skill of photojournalism over two years of teaching under some truly talented photographers.

In college, I shot for my university newspaper and was asked to photograph my first wedding, which was both stressful and exciting, and I fell in love documenting all the joy and emotion on a wedding day.

After college, I was allowed to live in South East Asia, working as a SCUBA instructor and delving into the world of underwater photography as a photographer for a European-Based Dive Travel Magazine called X-Ray.

While living in Malaysia, I ended up meeting my future husband, and after two years working in SE Asia, he and I moved to the USA, to Oregon.

Oregon State isn’t exactly a MECCA for Scuba Diving. I’d been out of the newspaper gig for too long to have any networking contacts to get a job as a photojournalist, so remembering how much I loved photographing weddings in college, I went out on a limb and created Kate Holt Photography and began advertising my services as a wedding photographer.

The first few years were a bit of a struggle. I did not have a strong portfolio, and my husband could not work as he was a UK citizen and getting his green card was a lengthy process. After about two years, however, and many hours of online training from some phenomenally successful wedding photographers, Kate Holt Photography hit its stride and my wedding season began to be booked solid.

Today, I shoot over 30 weddings annually and have a team of photographers in Oregon and Washington. My husband and I photograph luxury weddings locally in the Pacific Northwest and throughout the US, including the stunning venues in Nashville!

We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
One of the most challenging parts of my career was just the first year. I’d only photographed 2 weddings in college, and suddenly I was sitting down with 10-15 couples and promising them that I was the right choice for them to trust with one of the biggest days of their life. I remember studying poses from other photographers like flashcards, sitting at coffee shops, and memorizing exactly how I would explain to a couple how to get into a certain pose, coming up with fun prompts to get a shy couple to loosen up and let their true personality shine through.

For the first two years of my business, I was not making a livable wage, and my husband was in the middle of getting his green card, so he was ineligible to work. I got a waitress job and worked until 2 am several times a night while studying and practicing photography any chance I got. I was putting in the hours, and knowing that I would make my business a success kept me going through all the exhaustion and struggle, and growing pains of moving from amateur to true professional in the wedding field of photography.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am referred to as a Natural Light Photographer specializing in candid style wedding portraiture. This means that the images I produce for my clients have an editing style that includes colors that are a tad brighter than true-life, giving the images a “bridal” quality to them with their lightness. It also means I have to be able to find a consistency using only the ambient natural light in a location- no matter if that location is a church, garden, barn, event hall, vineyard, or private estate. This is challenging and requires a true mastery and complete conceptual and working understanding of light and color.

My style, portraiture-wise, has a more candid feel than your average wedding portraiture. With my background in photojournalism, my first love affair with photography came from capturing the emotion in my subjects and being able to truly tell a story through my images. I love translating this in my wedding portraiture- teaching my couples basics of posing the body in aesthetic ways, but then interacting with them and giving them ways to interact together to bring out genuine, candid emotions and expressions and telling the story of them as a couple and their unique love story.

Any big plans?
2022 was the first year of truly embracing being a destination photographer. As the founder of Kate Holt Photography and now with over 10 years of experience photographing weddings, the level of quality and expertise I bring is truly a luxury experience, so from this year forward, I will be focusing on taking the time to find those couples who are looking for a top-tier wedding experience and who value the type of total-package that I offer. Many times these types of couples host destination weddings, so while Oregon is currently the home base for my business, I plan on personally branching out to having travel as an integral part of most weddings I shoot.

Pricing:

• Average cost for a full-day of wedding photography: $5,500

Contact Info:

• Website: www.kateholtphotography.com
• Instagram: @kateholtphotography
• Facebook: www.Facebook.com/kateholtphotography