Creating Those Perfect Wedding and Family Memories
By Angela Rogalski
Since she was a child, Elizabeth Skelton has always loved taking pictures. However, she became serious about the idea when she found out her own wedding photographer was doing double duty.
“My photographer moonlighted as a wedding photographer,” says Skelton. “It wasn’t her full-time gig. Well, I just found that so interesting. I began to wonder why I couldn’t do it as well. I’d had an old Minolta camera in my hands since I was a kid, so I knew I loved doing it. So, I slowly just started taking pictures of friends and the next thing I knew one of my friends hired me to shoot her wedding for pretty cheap and it just took off from there.”
Skelton says her photography focuses on becoming a family and families in general.
“My passion is weddings,” she says. “Getting married and then photographing children, from infants on up is really what brings me joy. I have done senior portraits too. Things like that, but really weddings and families make my heart sing. I always say that I focus on the chaos, the love and everything in between.”
Skelton works out of her home in Indianola and has five children, and she loves the freedom photography gives her as far her kids. Ranging in ages one through seven, she says she can pretty much work around their schedules which makes things so much easier for her whole family.
And, Skelton does travel with her work. She’s photographed a wedding in Oklahoma, New Orleans, Nashville, just all over the place. She really enjoys the different venues she’s covered.
“And, being the only one; I’m my only helper,” she laughs. “I really can fully enjoy what I do and how I do it. It’s an awesome way to make a living.”
Growing up her parents had been into photography and always had an old field camera laying around and she would pick it up to use all of the time. In fact, she actually learned the basics from her mother.
“My mom and I would go down to Natchez and Port Gibson and take pictures of things down there and that’s how I learned to use a camera,” she says. “And, before you knew it, I just sort of fell into doing weddings after learning my own wedding photographer was working two jobs.”
Today, Skelton enjoys everything about helping couples make those perfect memories.
“I’ve been doing this professionally since 2010,” she says. “And, I can help couples with themes, venues, just the entire wedding scene. If they want a rustic setting, yet majestic, I have lists of amazing places we could do the pictures. It’s so much fun.”
Skelton’s art is natural and organic. She never took a professional class in her life, her gift comes as a natural talent and feels so blessed from that.
“I want to help my clients create those perfect memories,” she says. “I want them to want to hang my pictures on their walls and showcase them. If I can do that for one family, and that family tells another family, I’m happy.”
For more info, check out her Facebook page: facebook.com/skeltonphotographie