When Tayanna Nelson and her spouse started off hunting for a marriage photographer, they searched higher and low for an inclusive photographer. “Everywhere I turned, people in our metropolis experienced a stacked portfolio, but it was full of slender, white and conventionally interesting individuals,” Nelson states.
The aggravation from that encounter inspired her to leverage her portrait pictures competencies and start Hey Tay, a Midwest-centered and LGBTQ+-focused marriage ceremony photography organization. She serves as a self-proclaimed “hype person” for all styles of clients, and her mission is to deliver a harmless place for marginalized partners to express their love.
Very last calendar year, Nelson ramped up her other images business, Great Bodies, wherever she gives boudoir photography classes for all folks “without disgrace.” In just five years due to the fact the KC indigenous remaining her company vocation to go freelance, she has empowered innumerable people to come to feel worthy of pictures, and she’s just finding begun.
When did you initially select up a digital camera? I started out photographing people in large college since a mate of mine was continuously using these amazing self-portraits. I experimented with that, but I was not nearly as good at it, so I tried out photographing other people in its place and fell in enjoy with it.
What impressed you to go away your company work and pursue your pictures business enterprise whole time? When my spouse and I started off dating, I looked all over the place for a photographer who photographed folks who seemed like me, and it was not possible. I realized then that I had an uncomplicated market to fill. People were too frightened to do it them selves because there’s some fantasy that you have to pose people today differently. You actually really don’t. People today just want to be handled like human beings and want to really feel worthy of shots.
Inform us much more about the Great Bodies job. I’m super open up about the fact that I have arthritis and are living with every day and incredibly serious continual pain. I casually started out photographing boudoir in 2015, and then throughout the pandemic I considered for my safety I’d need to have to emphasis extra on points I experienced regulate of, so I ramped up my boudoir enterprise. I identified out how great I experience sharing visuals with people, permitting them see by themselves by my lens, and assembly individuals from such varied backgrounds with these distinctive motives for having a boudoir session. It was the excellent companion to weddings.
What will get you most thrilled about being a Kansas Citian appropriate now? I have located it really effortless to make buddies who are like-minded, and there are a good deal of people who just want to see each individual other gain. We’re all pretty open up and energized for what’s to occur.
KC Favorites
Initial, Brunch “I typically strike up Third Street Social for a fantastic brunch. Their drink menu is amazing, even without the need of the bottomless mimosas, but on leading of that, their biscuits and gravy is drool-worthy.”
Espresso Break “I’m not a extremely innovative coffee particular person, but the very best coffee I have at any time had has been possibly at the Wild Way coffee cart, who made it so accessible to a noob like me, or Messenger Espresso”
Fries for Lunch “I was just lately taken to Ça Va for some drinks and what were pretty much the very best french fries of my life”
Steak for Evening meal “I will go wherever on earth for supper that has a great steak. That utilised to be ’37 Steak, but the Gordon Ramsay cafe [replaced that]. Avenues Bistro did have an remarkable pineapple marinated steak that I liked, but Covid has me looking for a new most loved steak location. If you examine this and know the place I really should be, I’d enjoy you endlessly.”
