Today we’d like to introduce you to Stephen Kim and Bree Mooers.
Stephen and Bree, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
We are two adventurous soulmates from Central Florida who met on Instagram through a hashtag #floridasprings that connects a statewide group of cave divers, treasure hunters, and underwater photographers! As much as we’d like to say we found ancient treasures, we were really in it for the underwater photography!! Our first date was at Ginnie Springs, a diving hole where we went ‘hunting’ for photos and came back with a mutual attraction for each other – and we’ve been taking photos ever since! Bree worked in the wedding industry since high school, interning with wedding coordinators and florists, but her true passion was always photography.
After shadowing a wedding photographer, she fell in love with capturing the intimate moments throughout the wedding day & decided that was what she was destined to do!
As we grew a love for photographing weddings, we quickly realized that NO bride should get bitten by mosquitos on her wedding date like they do in Florida. We visited Southern California and instantly fell in love with the people and the climate & we packed up everything that we could and drove cross country to San Diego, where we now call home. We’ve been shooting weddings for almost two years, and owe our success to the mentors and friends back in FL and here in SD!
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
The hardest part of moving our business to a new city was the unwelcoming crowd of photographers. We could tell that they ‘didn’t want to give out a piece of the pie.’ That’s alright because we went and baked a cake! Hahaha, but no – we had all the feelings of self-doubt and anxiety that you’d expect when moving a business to a new place especially when its a saturated market like San Diego!
We felt outcasted and not welcomed, so we found a few mentors that were open to tell us their stories and to help us along the way! They reminded us that our lives are not ours if we constantly care about what others think, and we put our self-limiting thoughts aside to help us get to where we are now!
Please tell us about Bree and Stephen Photography.
We specialize in photographing intimate weddings, passionate couples, and adventurous experiences! What sets us apart is in our ability to get along with couples from ALL walks of life. So whether they are more shy and introverted, or wild and extroverted, we bring that out and capture the true essence of their relationship. Our mission is to distract you from your own self-doubt and turn the photo-session into a double-date! We believe that candid moments are real, posed moments are not.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If we could start over, we would have left self-doubt aside so we could focus on what really matters: serving your community of brides, industry partners, and fellow photographers! We are all one community and when we work together, magical weddings happen for magical brides in magical places!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.BreeandStephen.com/
- Phone: 407-716-9091
- Email: breeandstephen@gmail.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/breeandstephenphoto
- Facebook: facebook.com/breeandstephen
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/bree-stephen-photography-carlsbad
- Other: facebook.com/breeandstephen/reviews
Getting in touch: SDVoyager is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
