Meet Macey Heim of The Heims Photo

Today we’d like to introduce you to Macey Heim.

Macey, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I’ve always been independent. I grew up right smack in the middle of three girls and always was the one with a very particular way of doing things. My family lovingly used the term “bossy”, but I preferred the term driven. 😉

I knew from a young age. I wasn’t super interested in working for someone else when I got older. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was quite the little feminist growing up, always rooting for the strong females and underdogs in books and on-screen (because the Pink Power Ranger is far superior to all of the others, and Harry Potter would’ve never survived without Hermione… let’s be real here).

That passion stayed dormant in me for a while during my early teenage years until one summer, when I was around 14. At this point my family had moved to Orlando, Florida, but my sisters and I were spending a few weeks of the summer at our grandparents’ property just outside of Atlanta. I brought my point and shoot camera and was snapping photos of everything I could see. My grandparents live on a lot of lands with a field and a barn, and a lot of birds, so the content of photos was limitless. I edited the photos using some free editing software I found on the internet and of course uploaded them to Facebook. To my surprise, a lot of people commented on the pictures mentioning how pretty they were (looking back they were just short of terrible, but at the time it started to spark a little something in me). I had never really thought about being a photographer, but the thought started to intrigue me.

Fast forward a year or so, it’s Christmastime and some of my grandparents generously surprised all of us grandkids with an unexpected check for our Christmas gift that year. Everyone was so excited and talking about what they wanted to buy or what they wanted to save for, and my mind immediately goes into investment mode… which is odd for a 15-year-old, but I guess I was subconsciously business-savvy back in the day. My mind kept going back to “How can I make this money turn into more money?” and a dream was born.

I used my Christmas money to buy my first somewhat professional camera and immediately started photographing my friends and family. Eventually, that turned in to other families asking to hire me to photograph their family photos, and slowly but surely turned in to one of my friends asking me to photograph her wedding day. Bless her for trusting me and my zero experience of weddings, but I do have to say this is where I truly discovered my passion for wedding days. The hustle and bustle, the nerves, the excitement. This was the moment I started to have a bit of direction in where I wanted to take my photography.

At this point, I had a good little thing going with my business, but I also still wasn’t super confident that this would be able to sustain me and turn into a whole career… so with slight hesitation, I started working part-time at Disney when I was 18, as well as starting college in the direction of a Hospitality degree.

Around this time, I met a guy named Danny Heim, who would turn out to be really special. He is charming, hilarious, and so creative. We started dating, fell in love, got engaged, and naturally started planning for our future. The semester before our wedding day, I was in full-on 3-hour Hospitality courses and feeling drained + uninterested. As an enneagram 2, I have always loved taking care of people, and I thought the hotel or restaurant industry would be perfect for me… but something just wasn’t right. Three weeks before our big day, I got a call from one of my managers at Disney telling me that my recreation position was going to be ending, and all of our team was going to be sent to a new location in completely new roles. The signs and the timing couldn’t have been more daunting, but they also couldn’t have been more clear. I respectfully told my manager that I think it’s time that I part ways with the company, and he was extremely understanding and supportive.

Long story short: The spring of 2014, I dropped out of college, quit my job, AND THEN got married.

(27-year-old Macey would’ve never been so foolish, but I’m so proud of that little 21 year old for being bold and taking the leap)

I used my free time to study up and dive into learning like I never had before. I was passionate, on fire, and so excited to be investing my time and energy into something that brought me so much joy. I’ve been a full-time photographer ever since, and after a couple of years of practice + learning, my husband Danny has shot almost every wedding with me. He works for the business part-time while keeping a full-time job during the week. What started out as Macey Brumbelow Photography, turned into Macey Heim Photography, and has now settled on The Heims. We’ve been in the game for a minute, but at the same time we’re full of big dreams and feel like we’re just getting started.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Anyone that runs their own business can tell you that it’s almost never a “smooth” road. BUT, that’s what we love about it. It’s stressful to not always be able to plan ahead, to not always know you’re guaranteed a paycheck, to not know what the years ahead might hold. But you’re doing it, and you’re in this, and somehow it always seems to come together. The tough times are hard, the days can belong, and the work can be lonely… any business owner can agree, but those times make the good times that much sweeter. At the end of the day, the seasons that were filled with uncertainty create such a space for gratefulness. To me there is nothing more rewarding than looking back at all of the struggles and seeing the hustle, the tears, the drive, and the courage it took to get us to where we are today.

The Heims Photo – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
While we do a little bit of everything including family portraits, event coverage, real estate/interior design photography, and in-home newborn sessions, our primary focus is Wedding + Engagement photography.

I’m a hopeless romantic and something about hearing our couple’s stories and being able to have such a valuable front row seat to all of these days keeps me going. There are so, so many incredibly talented wedding photographers in the industry (seriously, the amount of talent out there is astounding) I think something that sets us apart is the fact that we are a husband + wife team. Danny and I, for the most part, work like a well-oiled machine on a wedding day, always knowing where the other is. We’ve experienced our own wedding day together and now have the honor of experiencing so many others. We’re so passionate about marriage + relationships and the fact that we get to be a part of so many is something that we do not take lightly.

Anyone that has worked with us knows that we consider our clients our friends. To this day we still talk about our couples over the years and the memories we’ve made with them. We strive to show up to these wedding days like a long-time friend and never just the hired vendors. We care about our people and try to give them the most stress-free and fun day imaginable… that often looks like whipping out bandaids from our emergency kit when your shoe has rubbed a blister or coming to the rescue when your dress just won’t bustle correctly. We’ve cried with our couples, laughed with our couples, and have been through some of the most wild days. We cannot wait to add you to our Christmas card list, to keep up with your growing little families for years on Instagram, and to send all of the Bachelor memes on Monday night. 😉

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I will start my favorite childhood memory with a shoutout to all of the homeschoolers out there that are doing all the things and proving the stereotypes wrong. There are more of us than you’d think. Way to go fam!

That being said, my two sisters and I were homeschooled by our Mom (the real MVP) throughout the vast majority of our school years. It was 2002, and the company my Dad worked for was shutting down… resulting in their employees unfortunately being laid off. My Dad getting a good severance package + all of us being able to do school anywhere equaled a recipe for the ultimate family road trip. We owned an RV and absolutely loved to go camping on the weekends, so it was only natural that we use this time to travel.

We packed up everything we could possibly need and we hit the road. Our trip consisted of us traveling to approximately 25 states and lasted almost 50 days. We saw the Grand Canyon, the Rocky Mountains, the Hollywood sign, the Space Needle, the cornfields of Kansas, Yellowstone, the Vegas strip, the sunset over the pacific, and countless other famous destinations.

Some of the days were difficult, being cooped up in a pretty small space for that amount of time, but looking back, I wouldn’t have traded that experience for the world. Not many people can say they had the chance to visit the San Diego zoo or ride to the top of the St. Louis arch as a child and I’m so thankful for the memories my parents gave us.

The trip was officially dubbed “Out West,” and eighteen years later, my family still talks about it all the time. Looking back, I think this is where my passion for travel and even photography may have started. My Mom was always hanging out of the truck window to snap photos of the state signs, and running to join the family for a self-timed portrait. So many rolls of film were used up, and so many photo albums filled with the memories we made over those two months. I had many interview-worthy memories growing up, but this was by far my favorite.

Pricing:

• Our couples typically spend an average of $3,500 -$4,500 on their wedding day photography.
• Family + Portrait sessions start at $350.
• In-Home Newborn sessions start at $450.

Contact Info:

• Website: TheHeimsPhoto.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: Instagram.com/TheHeimsPhoto
• Facebook: Facebook.com/TheHeims

Image Credit:
Serena Morandi Photography
Kayla Johnson Photography

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