Hi Ya'll, aren't you glad the sun is shining today??!! We certainly are! Despite the dreary weather this month, we haven't let it put a "damper" (see what I did there 😉 ) on our productivity! We have been super busy not only shooting several sports teams, preschools and weddings but also designing and preparing for the launch of our brand new website! On June 1st, we will be making the big change but in the meantime, we have a little contest to get under way...!
Every day this week, there will be an "About Me" post from 1 Tiptoe lady, giving you the lowdown on her life. You know, personality quirks, likes and dislikes, funny stories; pretty much anything we want to throw out there to our captive audience, lol! Read these carefully and thoroughly because on Tuesday, May 31st we will release our 1st Ever Tiptoe Studios Scavenger Hunt! There will be questions plucked from each blog post for you to answer and maybe a "find the object" portion thrown in for good measure. All answers must be submitted to our email, tiptoestudios@yahoo.com, June 1st by midnight to be entered to win! The prize? One lucky winner will receive a 15 minute Tiny Session with 10 print released images, a $500 value! Want to increase your chance to win? You can receive one additional entry each for liking our Facebook page, following us on Twitter, following us on Instagram and subscribing to the Tiptoe Studios blog. So, shall we get this thing going? Here is the first portion of our All About Me Series:
Tiptoe Beginnings...
Sometime in 2004 in what feels like a galaxy far, far away, Tara Showen, Lisa Mercer and Jennifer Gustines met while working at Jefferson Security Bank in Charles Town, WV. After a few more years of "working for the man" we decided to strike out on our own and Tiptoe Studios was formally created in July of 2008. In the beginning we had no studio and shot on location in Charles Town, Shepherdstown and Harpers Ferry.
With the addition of a studio around 2010, we also added Ande Compton who we never imagined would stick with us through thick and thin for the next 6 years! Ande started out as our office girl but quickly impressed us with her edgy and modern style of photography and has since escalated to part-time photographer while attending Shepherd University.
In January of 2014, Beth Williams, a longtime client (and Jennifer's cousin!) joined us as our Winchester area photographer. Her eagerness and persistence has helped us spread the Tiptoe word and we consider ourselves lucky to have her!
We moved into our current studio space 4 years ago this September and we have enjoyed being in the center of downtown Charles Town. For those of you who have never visited, stop on by sometime for a visit! We love to show our studio off!
We believe Tiptoe is so successful because of our shared customer service related backgrounds and also because we genuinely love each other and get along so well! We often get inquiries from people who are eager to join our team and the underlying comment is always, "you guys just look like you have so much fun!" Well, we honestly do! It helps that we were friends before business partners and it is something that we try to never to lose sight of, even when we are elbows deep in editing and spending hours upon hours in meetings in the studio. If you follow our Facebook and Instagram pages, you can see that we spend lots of non-Tiptoe time together as well!
There are a few people who deserve some pretty big thank yous for helping Tiptoe truly flourish along the way:
Art Henderson- Art taught us so much when we first began Tiptoe Studios, including the very basics and, more recently, he taught us natural light girls a little bit more about studio lighting as well! Thank you Art!
Lindsay Hall and Chasity Eggleton- These girls were our Missouri and local photographers and we truly believe they were instrumental to making Tiptoe Studios the success it is today. Even though major life changes have taken us on different paths, we still believe that "once a Tiptoe lady, always a Tiptoe Lady" and consider them our Tiptoe Family even now! Love you, ladies and thank you so much for everything!
So that ends the "Tiptoe beginnings" portion! I hope you read it carefully... Tara is up next and will be posting later on today!
XOXO!