As you may or may not have noticed, the Alt Perspective guest blog series took a little hiatus for the past few months. With the site redesign, I had a renewed energy to bring it back to life and I’m really thriled to kick it off with my buds, Pat & Kate O’Brien (well, soon to be Kate O’Brien).

Like many of the previous contributors to this series, I met Pat through social media. He is a local photographer who shares similar styles in photography and humor and is just a great person to know. Pat is a smart guy and a really hard worker and I always marvel at his tenacity to figure things out. It’s a trait I certainly wish I had in more abundance.

Kate is an all-around lovely gal with plenty of moxy. You can tell right away that she is the perfect compliment to Pat and that became instantly apparent when the three of us spent an awesome day shooting around Red Rock Canyon in Nevada last year. Kate has a refreshily natural eye and it just bleeds through in her images. There is purity in her shots and it certainly vibes with me.

And so, I’m happy to have the opportunity to let you all learn a bit more about my two friends, Pat & Kate.

You can follow Pat & Kate on Twitter, Facebook and their Blog

Untitled – Pat & Kate O’Brien

We’re Kate and Pat of O’Brien Photo. We first need to thank Brian for featuring us on his blog. Brian and Pat have become good photo friends over the past year and I (Kate) have had the chance to get to know Brian recently as well. He’s an awesome photographer but a better friend who genuinely wants others to succeed. It’s hard to come across someone like that these days. Plus, he laughs at our jokes and buys us dinner. Does it get any better? Not that I know of.

So where to begin? I’ll start with the story of Pat and me. I didn’t know him until I was 22-years-old even though we went to school together since we were 11. Apparently he didn’t think I was cute enough to give me a second look through the 7 years of going to school together. I’m thoroughly offended. 11 years later, he lived in my backyard. Not literally, but in the house behind me. One day I jumped the fence to go to a party at his house and I never jumped back. We’re now getting married and starting a photography business together.

Kate’s Story

I first became interested in photography in high school and forced my parents to buy me a film camera. I didn’t know what I was doing and developed overexposed, blurry and absolutely terrible pictures. I wanted to go to photography school but was talked out of it, “because I wouldn’t make any money in it”. Instead, I started going to school for Entrepreneurship in hopes of one day starting my own business. I stopped taking pictures for a couple of years but never lost my passion for it. When Pat and I got together, he had an extra camera and I scooped it up without permission. We like to say that I went to the “O’Brien School of Photography”. From there, I started to take a picture a day of the most random things but it helped me learn the ins-and-outs of my camera. I’ve since grown to love portrait photography with natural light and have recently made it my focus. I always try to shoot with a wide open aperture so everything but someone’s face just melts away in the background.

Pat’s Story

I picked up my first camera when I was young and enjoyed taking random pictures. My parents probably did not enjoy paying to develop the film though! When I purchased my first digital camera and saw that the photos were “free” to develop, that’s when I truly photographed everything.

While in the Army, the decision was made to send me to an Army Public Relations class focusing on photography and military photojournalism. After the course I walked away feeling confident about my ability to tell a story with my images. It was this class that really was the beginning of my interest to learn more, and do more, with photography. Ever since then, I’ve really enjoyed capturing moments, whether it is a beautiful landscape or a happy couple. Finding the story and making it translate through the lens is what allows me to be creative.

We started off traveling around and taking landscape pictures together. We never thought about getting into portrait photography until last fall, when Pat’s sister asked him to take her engagement pictures. We put them up on Facebook for her to have and things just starting rolling in from there. We got a few family portrait sessions, some engagement sessions and started to get wedding inquiries… all from one shoot. It was crazy. Since then, we’ve shot a few weddings and are almost booked up for 2012. We are focused on building a strong wedding photography business.

I have to say, this is one of the hardest undertakings we’ve ever done. We’re quickly learning how much really goes into starting a business. Some nights we want to drop kick each other into next week, but we both wouldn’t be able to do this without the other. We’ve focused on making our business about who we are. We want to create portraits that represent both us and our clients. To us, that’s fun, natural and easy going. I truly believe that someone’s personality comes through from the pictures they take.

We’ve also started to build a brand that represents our personalities through our blog. Pat blogs about the technical side since that is his strong point, while I write what we’re learning, how much I hated the gym last night and what my favorite pair of shoes currently are. Why? I want to be relatable, not only on a photographic level but also on a personal one. I don’t want us to just be photographers with nice cameras but photographers with a funny, whacked out life… because that’s our reality.

Now that we’re also engaged, we have the bride and groom perspective. To me, this is huge in learning what we want for our wedding and then turn around to make that into our business. We’ll see where this approach takes us in the upcoming years. As of right now, things are headed in the right direction and we’re both really excited about the future.