I’m Kellie Trenkle, of
captivating photography & design co., located in southern Oregon.
I’m the girl with the camera and the vision. I have a full-time
cheerleader/assistant/left-brained-genius-ista and a team of encouragers – my volunteer V.P.’s that for the past decade have encouraged me to step-up and embrace my creative vision and passion for photography.
My husband is my business manager. He’s got some serious smarts about the business side of things (with nearly 2 decades of upper management on his resume), and my four babes (ages 6 & under) are my inspiration, my models, and my cheerleaders.
I’ve always loved & treasured photos, but when my husband and I bought a Minolta film SLR camera for our 2001 wedding, I was hooked on being behind the lens and creating that short & sweet depth of field in my shots.
Fast-forward 7 years and four busy kiddos later, I was browsing CraigsList one night at 2:00a.m. looking for something additional I could do to help supplement our income. “Just making it” can be challenging at times.
I’ve been freelancing as a graphic designer & marketing consultant since 2003. It was pretty casual, about one design job per month, which was the perfect workload with my babes being so young, while we were simultaneously serving full-time as youth leaders for EPIC, our high school youth group, and homeschooling our oldest. We were already a busy family and I always wanted being a wife and mom to come first for me.
So, like a crazy woman, I sat at the computer contemplating creating Google ads, filling out online surveys for $2.50 for every 500,000 questions, or telemarketing. I even got lured into looking at a surrogacy website from one of the job listings (hey, $20,000 to carry a baby? I KNOW I’m good at that!).
[Ridiculous! Don’t try making any career decisions in the middle of the night – you’ll end up with lots of spam.]
Anyway, the next morning, my husband looked at me earnestly and said, “Babe, you don’t have time for a “job.” (True.) “But I know what you’re passionate about. God’s put some desires in your heart and if you’re wanting to bring in income, do what you’re passionate about – that’s where His will is.” And off to work he went. I got a call literally later that same day from a friend who wanted to know if I’d ever considered getting into sports team photography. “Funny you should ask…”
That week, I applied for a business license. I voraciously read several technical photography books, including
Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson, devoured everything written by Scott Kelby, bought a 50mm, joined some online forums, subscribed to
kelbytrainingonline.com and would later take a class at the Umpqua Valley Arts Center. Late October 2008, I took the leap of faith going from freelancing to giving my dream a name –
captivating photography & design co.{This post was written in response to a 2009 interview published online by a professional printing company I use, you can also read it
here on my blog in it's entirety.}
