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Life & Work with Jess Wakefield and Tony Romo

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Jess Wakefield and Tony Romo.

Hi Jess and Tony, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
We met at the Hallmark Institute of Photography in 2007 during the last half of the school year (no association with the Hallmark greeting card company). We had some classes together, and had some mutual friends, so we started hanging out. After graduation in 2007, Jess moved down to North Carolina and Tony moved back home to Oklahoma for his family. Jess worked as a photographer for Olan Mills and an ad agency and Tony worked as an assistant to a few local photographers and did some freelance photography work.

We kept in contact from time to time, and Jess moved to Texas in 2008, then to Oklahoma City in 2009. In Oklahoma, we hung out, went on some road trips, and practiced improving our photography skills every chance we had. In 2009, Tony got a job as a photographer on a cruise ship and left OKC to work there for a few months. After leaving that job, he returned to OKC and both of us worked as school photographers. That required a lot of traveling within Oklahoma and tons of super early mornings. It was something that neither of us had experience in, so it was a great way to build some new skills in photography as well as in patience. We talked off and on about starting a photography business, but it wasn’t in the cards at the moment and in 2010, Jess moved to South Carolina.

In the fall of 2010, Tony got a job at Tinker Air Force Base as a photographer and Jess was working as a sports photographer for a company in Charleston. Again, we were both working jobs that were in fairly new areas of photography, but it was just adding to our arsenal of photography knowledge and skills. We were both doing photography work for ourselves whenever an opportunity arose, and included portraits and a couple of weddings.

In June of 2011, Jess contacted Tony to help photograph her brother’s wedding. We had both shot weddings by ourselves and found out that we don’t like shooting them alone. We really enjoyed working as a team and the photos came out great! Then in the end of 2011, Jess moved to Missouri for family reasons and Tony accepted a job in Monroe, LA to work as a commercial photographer. We continued to keep in touch and talked more than once about starting a photography business.

One day, in 2013, Jess contacted Tony and said, “We’ve talked about doing a photography business before and we’ve said we don’t have the money or the time, but there will never be enough money and there will never be enough time. Why don’t we do it?” to which Tony replied, “You’re right. Let’s do it.” and from there, the concept began. We started to plan out names, what we were going to shoot, and how we were going to focus the business. So, in 2014, Jess packed up once again and left Kansas City for Northern Louisiana. Dark Light Photo Studios was born in Monroe, LA and became official in January 2015.

We have come a long way from those days. We began the business by specializing in wedding photography, but then decided to branch out and include senior and family portrait photography. As time went by and the business progressed, we continued to learn more and more about photography, by being involved with through Professional Photographers of America (PPA) and Professional Photographers of Louisiana (PPLA). When 2016 rolled around, we changed our name to Dark Light Portrait Studios and wrote an official business plan.

In 2017, we decided it was time to move from Monroe and settled on Tampa, FL. In April of 2017, we made Tampa our stomping grounds and both became certified professional photographers through PPA. Since being in Tampa, we have been making connections with some amazing people, organizations and non-profits. We still travel back to Louisiana each year for past and new clients, have also done some work for the Coast Guard in North Carolina and are ready and able to travel anywhere we need to go.

Although 2020 has put us through a major obstacle course, we are still pushing through. We have adjusted to the Covid protocols by wearing masks, having sanitizer spray, wearing gloves and maintaining social distance when at all possible. Our main focus as business owners is to not only provide quality photography work and beautiful products, but also to provide an awesome customer experience that our clients will remember and share with friends and family. As we tell people, we take photography seriously, but we have a good time doing it!

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
A smooth road? No. More like an obstacle course, complete with rope ladders, mud pits and maybe even fire. We have found it to be a constant uphill climb, with a few valleys thrown in. The biggest struggle is marketing and getting people to know who we are. In a sea of faux-tographers who undercut and undervalue the work that goes into the craft of photography, we find that there are people who expect everything for pennies. In addition to being photographers, we have to be social media advertisers, marketers, retouchers, business planners, editors, bloggers, vloggers, etc… There really is a lot that goes into running a business, especially if you’re starting from the ground up and bankrolling the whole process. In addition, like for everyone else in the world, Covid put a complete stop to everything we had planned this year and wiped our calendar clean. It definitely slowed the progress we were making exponentially, but luckily, we have been able to pick up a bit towards the end of the year. We are ending on a high note, but it could have been a lot higher.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar, what can you tell them about what you do?
Currently, we do a lot of events and portraits, including high school seniors, tweens and families as well as weddings. However, prior to the pandemic, we decided that we really wanted to focus on the senior population, being the baby boomer generation, or people who are 55+. In addition to living in Florida, where a lot of retired people live, we feel like this is a very under represented group. Photographers tend to skip this generation in their marketing and advertising, however in reality, people in that generation still have stuff going on that is worthy of photography. They still have big moments in life, special times, birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, families, etc… so that is something that we will be focusing on more once it is safe to do so.

We believe what sets us apart from others is our customer experience. We work hard to provide an experience that is genuine, honest, and open. We believe that we need to create an experience that our clients will remember and would be happy to refer and come back to again. We always say to our clients that “You are like family to us,” and we try to hold true to that. Especially when we send our annual Christmas Card. It is awesome!

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
Without the support of our clients, friends, and families we would not be where we are today. Without them, we wouldn’t have Dark Light Portrait Studios. Through PPA & PPLA, we have met some great people and mentors. In the process of building this business, we have met amazing people who give so much of themselves back to others that it inspires us to give back our little part to the community when we can.

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