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Meet Stephanie Flores

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Stephanie Flores.

Stephanie, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I first fell in love with photography when I was just six years old, I would run around my grandparent’s house with a ninja turtle camera. See back then we didn’t have digital cameras we only had film, and I would go through four rolls a week. I took pictures of everything, then fast forward to high school when I took a photography class and really fell in love. I didn’t think I could ever have a career in photography, so I had a backup plan of course.

I decided that I was going to go to school to be in the Criminal Justice field, I knew that wasn’t my dream job, so my heart wasn’t fully in it. My boyfriend now husband told me to follow my heart, and he gave me my first DSLR camera for my 23rd birthday; it was a Canon T3i. That was the start of my professional photography career, I started off first doing family and friends really honing in on my skills, YouTubing, and learning. I wasn’t until a year later that I felt ready to really start this journey.

After I married my soul mate life got hard he was diagnosed with testicular cancer, our lives changed. I took a little break from my photography to have a regular job. Though I would still work on the weekends, it was really hard for me to leave him while he went through chemotherapy. Once he beat cancer, we both decided that life was way too short so I became part-time in my regular job and really started to focus on my photography.

Just a year after we went through the roughest couple of months of our lives we found out that we were expecting our first child. It was a miracle in itself since he had testicular cancer; our chances were a lot slimmer. She had decided that her presence was needed 36 days early, so our Bella Boo came on Christmas Eve 2016. At the time we didn’t know how much of a blessing that would be.

My husband and I were able to enjoy being a family of three for only three short weeks before my husband suffered a brain aneurysm. He was 29 years old and had already gone through stage 4 testicular cancer and now a brain aneurysm. Like we couldn’t catch a break, he was in a coma for 30 days in which time I took off from everything photography to focus on being a mom and standing by his side.

I wish I can say that our troubles ended there sadly just four months after his initial stroke (brain aneurysm) he suffered another brain bleed. I ended up taking all of 2017 off of photography to be a stay at home mom and wife. It wasn’t until 2018 where I decided that it was time to go full time into photography, so I did just that put all my efforts into wedding and engagement photography.

So 2018 was the year of changes, and honestly, I feel it was my best year. Now 2019 has started off amazing family is doing well husband is almost walking and is in better health after his brain surgery in 2017.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Nothing you ever really wanted is smooth or easy, it takes a lot of hard work and dedication. Since I was pretty much a self-taught photographer, it was hard to really hard to learn from just watching videos. I would come back from work and sit for hours and learn, then I would go out and try them out, sometimes it would work and sometimes it was back to the drawing board.

Learning the editing process I feel was the hardest because you can edit in so many different ways. So finding my style, my voice was the toughest, but once I found it, everything just seems to fall into place. Also learning how to effectively run a business was hard, it took a lot of reading of books and trial and error. It’s like having a child you have to nurture it if you want to see it grow, feed it as well as give it all your time and energy.

Please tell us about Stephanie Flores Photography.
Stephanie Flores Photography is based out of Oxnard, Ca but travels to anywhere the wind will take us. We are known for our professional yet fun style of capturing some of the most intimate moments in someone’s life. It’s the way I pose our clients and help them to have fun and forget that I’m photographing them. They love the fact that they feel like they are just hanging out with a friend and not on a photoshoot.

I specialize in Wedding and Engagement Photography. Though I specialize in both wedding and engagement, I love to capture any type of portraits that my clients ask. I am proud that my clients feel that they can be completely themselves and feel so comfortable with me, photography is so intimate that sometimes it’s hard to have your clients feel comfortable in front of not only a camera but a stranger.

So I love to have my clients meet with me at least two times, this way they can get to know me while I get to know them. Find out what works for them are they more reserved or are they open to pretty much anything? I feel that sets me apart from the other photographers out here, it’s based on the connections I make with the couples from the moment they inquire with me.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
My favorite childhood memory was going to Thrifties and picking up that weeks prints with my nana, a lot of the time they were out of focus but hey what can I do right. I remember that I would open up a new disposable camera cause those were cheaper than a new roll of film, that smell you would get from a new camera omg!

I remember that my nana would always support me no matter how bad those images looked and did some of them look bad. I feel that starting off in photography at such a young age, I was able to find my career and my passion.

Pricing:

  • Weddings start at $2250
  • Engagement Portraits start at $450
  • We offer prints, albums, and USB starting at $750

Contact Info:

Getting in touch: VoyageLA 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.

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