Hello fellow photographers! My name is Mike and my wifes name is Buffy. We started Life Long Studios 7 years ago in Gainesville, FL after training under another photographer for 3 years.
My wife and I were both full time students in a college town in a small apartment. We met clients at our home and charged an average $800 for UNLIMITED coverage and an album.... I know, we look back and think "how stupid" too.
Skip forward 2 years of mundane photography career existence... and then we moved our company to the Tampa Bay area. Which, more or less, involved us restarting our business with all new vendors, relationships, marketing, etc...
My wife and I struggled to handle the growth of the business with just the two of us and decided to being hiring staff and figuring out how to manage the growth a little better.
Over the past 4 years we have grown from the $1000 everything and the kitchen sink wedding photographer, shooting 40 weddings per year, to a staff of 10, over 150 events each year, a full portrait studio, and tons of fun awards and published pieces of our work.
We are not the $10,000 wedding photographer, nor do we aim to be, we enjoy working and our clients spend around $3500 for us to shoot their event. Higher end bridal markets are a narrow bullseye to hit and just as saturated as the mass wedding market.
Our company focuses on providing consistent quality, service, value and products to our clients. Our workflow is honed to match our skill sets and keep our clients happy, which gets us great reviews and more client referrals.
We now have 3 teams of photographers, a full time office staff, including digital artists, album designers, and a bridal show sales team.
We attribute our companie
Event & Portrait Photographers. Annually our team shoots over 150 events, 300 studio portrait sessions and quarterly special boudoir portrait parties averaging 100 clients.
