Today’s Coffee Break with Amber Holritz is really a treat.  Like the whipped cream on your latte. I hope you’ve been enjoying these Coffee Breaks as much as I have!

When you do what you love, you love what you do. For Amber Holritz of Holritz Photography, based in Chattanooga, TN, that love lies in bringing beauty to everyone’s reality and, in turn, preserving it forever. While flipping through her first child’s photo albums, she realized that she had failed miserably at documenting the intricacies of his life. This became the catalyst for a career centered on capturing the realities of life, and capturing it beautifully.

Since that day, Amber has had the opportunity to photograph countless children and families, has been flown across the country to document family life, has spoken nationally to photographers about her passion, and has had several articles published in Rangefinder Magazine. She also spoke at 2009 WPPI with a Master Class on photographing family life.

I feel like Amber and I have always been friends.  She made an indelible mark on me the way she does on everyone she meets… and especially her clients.  I love that Amber doesn’t want to be known to her clients as “our photographer” but as “our FRIEND, the photographer.”  Her repeat clientele can speak to her success at just that.  Often Amber will be back photographing a family as often as six times a year, so she by the end of the year, she is pretty much family.

And family is really important to Amber.  Witness the countless pictures of her gorgeous kids and husband all over her facebook page and blog, and you will know that this is true!  As a husband/wife photograhy team, Amber has had to learn how to balance a successful career along with being a mom and wife.  I know how difficult that is, and I really appreciate how hard Amber works at it.  Once a week is designated as “Family Day” and no photography work gets done that day — except of course, all of the photography of their cutie pie kids!  It even has it’s own name: Happy Monday.  I love it.

Recently Amber visited California and I had the honor of not only being able to have my own personal Tag-A-Long session (where another photographer tags along to watch Amber at work), but the session was my very own family.  Amber’s style is unlike any I’ve ever seen before, where she truly just captures the essence of each family.  She never asked us to pose, never even asked us to look at the camera.  Amber just hung back and documented.  And what came out of that session were some fantastic images that I will treasure forever, because it will remind me of exactly how things were at that time in my life.  For example, the picture below is a little slice of life that happens nearly every night… I am helping my girls with their homework and my husband is cleaning in the kitchen….

LEARN:  What’s something that you feel like you’d like to learn more about, something you are continually learning?  What is something that you wish someone would have told you before you had to learn it the hard way?

A: Ha, if I truly answered this question, I’d still be typing three weeks from now, and my clients would be a little bit angry at my negligence. I feel like I am constantly learning and desiring to learn. I am currently (inspired by Kevin Swan and his talks on branding that I have been privileged to attend in recent months) determined to learn more about branding and positioning. I want to discover what hill Holritz Photography needs to stand on, and re-orient our branding and marketing around that position. This is something I wish we had known to consider when we started our business. We jumped into our business with no working knowledge of how to begin, and now, 6 years later, are having to do some branding and positioning backtracking. It’s a fun process, and I LOVE discovering exactly what we stand for, but I wish we had done at some point previous.

GROW:  How have you grown in the past five years in your business, in your own personal quest for growth, in your awareness of the world around you?

A: Wow… in 5 years everything has changed. I feel like the last four years have been particularly monumental for me, in terms of growth. It was four years ago that I walked away from my full-time job, in exchange for a quest to learn how to photograph babies. (This coincided with the birth of my beautiful daughter, Addison.) Since that moment, I’ve spent countless hours, days, weeks, fine-tuning my ability to turn mundane and ordinary moments into beautiful memories. This skill has opened my eyes to the world… where I might’ve once seen plain, or boring… I now see beautiful and extraordinary. It happens with my children. It happens in my travels. It happens with my clients. Its an amazing gift, to suddenly see beauty in everything!

How would you recommend others grow—do you have a favorite marketing tip, workshop suggestion, or convention to attend?

A: This industry is FULL of amazing photographers willing to share with you, and help you grow your business. A few of my favorite workshops are found at www.kissweddingbooks.com/getsimple and www.mcworkshops.com . Two very different types of workshops, but both highly beneficial to your business. I love the networking to be found at all of the major conventions, WPPI being my favorite, but don’t necessarily feel like that type of format should be the only type of learning that a photographer does during the early days of his business. The more involved workshop type settings are far more beneficial than the larger convention settings. I believe strongly in the power of networking. Nathan and I would NOT be where we are today without the help of our very dear friends, many of whom are leaders in this industry and are very willing to share with us and grow with us on a daily basis. Create deep and legitimate friendships with your peers… they’ll understand you, and help you, and hopefully, they will grow with you.

As for a marketing tip? To me, for my business, marketing is merely relationships. I want to have legitimate relationships with my clients… when the time comes for them to refer someone for a job, I want to hear them say “My friend Amber is a photographer…”, NOT “There’s this photographer, Amber Holritz.” The minute I become someones “friend Amber,” I’m in a very positive place for referrals.

SHARE:  How do you feel that you contribute to the industry?

A: I answer every email and Facebook message that comes across my desk. I don’t know if I will always be able to do this, but for now, every email gets an answer. I addition, I have one-on-one mentoring available as well as baby TAG-A-LONG sessions. We are very involved in our local photographic community, as well.

What is something you would like to share with your follow colleagues?  How can they turn around and do the same for others?

A: Use the internet and it’s various channels to help you create those relationships that I was talking about earlier. Forums, Facebook, Twitter… all of these are amazing incubators for relationships… both with your photographic peers, and with vendors and clients!

Favorite charitable contribution?

A: We love having the opportunity to mentor for Thirst Relief International!

Thank you so much Amber, for taking the time to give us a small insight into your life!  Loved your advice, especially your take on cultivating relationships.  You are definitely good at that.  Before you look at Amber’s work, you might want to check out Photographer’s Edit, a company started by Nathan to help photographers with their post-processing needs.  They also sell a DVD on Lightroom workflow as well as presets that work in Lightroom.

And now sit back and relax, and enjoy a few of my favorite images of Amber’s work.  She shoots almost exclusively black and white, lifestyle images.  I love the way she captures life.