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Widening the Lens of Wedding Photography in Colorado

Widening the Lens of Wedding Photography in Colorado

Standing in front of 200 of his favorite people, Clancey Woodlee looked around the quaint, dimly lit lawn of the Fort Collins Solarium, watching his July 4 wedding unfold both handsomely and masterfully. It was a day that would, as promised to his partner David, “always have fireworks.”

After spending nearly a year planning the event, Clancey and David Woodlee were married surrounded by the wedding industry’s finest. Woodlee had worked diligently to procure talented, outgoing, and kind vendors who understood their style and met their needs. The day went without flaw, with every detail well thought-out, from the eucalyptus table garlands to the precise size of the sequins on the wedding party’s dresses. Nothing was left without a double- or triple-check.

If someone asked Woodlee how difficult it was to plan the wedding, he’d probably crack a joke about underestimating the amount of champagne the guests would consume.Which, he will tell you, was a lot. But beyond that, he’d explain the frustration that came with nearly every other element.

Woodlee began planning the wedding the very same night he got engaged. He immediately reached out to vendors in hopes of securing them for the day. Despite his initial fears about planning the event, his most prominent problem came from the wedding industry itself. Woodlee noticed a troublesome scenario arising nearly every time he informed the vendors that their services were for a gay wedding.

“We would submit a request for pricing for a certain vendor, and we’d say that we were a gay couple. A lot of the time the pricing would be way more than they would ordinarily do for a straight couple or way less just based on if they wanted our wedding for their media or just to promote their business,” Woodlee said.

Rather than being disheartened by the inconsistencies, Woodlee saw how his passion for photography could fit in a competitive and growing industry.

Almost exactly three months after his wedding, Woodlee found himself itching to get into the wedding industry. After making a pros and cons list to determine what part of the wedding industry would suit him best, he landed on photography because it allowed for the perfect amount of creativity with the freedom to do his own little passion projects on the side.

In typical Woodlee fashion, he quit his nine to five job and decided to make wedding photography his full-time gig right from the beginning. Setting the goal of shooting three weddings in a year, Woodlee published his website and began looking for clients within his wide network of friends and family.

Woodlee explained that his client base began with people who were close and trusted him as he built his portfolio. Over the next few months, thanks to great networking and an incredible social media presence, he built a reputation and style that is recognizable and high-end.

Today, he is working to make the wedding industry more accessible to a wide range of people through consistent style and pricing. His pricing is the same regardless of his couple, embodying dependability and trustworthiness in an industry that seems unsure of how to react to non-normative relationships.

Woodlee set out to level the playing field for queer couples. According to data from U.S. tax returns examined by the New York Times in 2014, there were a total of 963,832 marriages in Colorado. Of those marriages, only 3,227 were same-sex couples. Only 0.33 percent of marriages were queer. As of June, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage.

Two years later, 61 percent of same-sex, cohabiting couples are married. And over the last year, 10.2 percent of LGBTQ Americans were married to someone of the same sex, up 2.3 percent from months before the Supreme Court ruling, according to Pew Research Center via a survey conducted by Gallup.

Woodlee is proud to be part of this growth. He grabbed the camera by the lens and started his business in 2016, just a year after the change in legislation. 2017 marks one year in business, and already he has shot more than 26 weddings in five different countries and established himself as a major competitor in the wedding photography industry.

Woodlee’s fascination for photography began as far back as he can recall. Growing up, “I was always the kid with the camera that was really annoying and taking too many photos,” he claimed.

As a child, Woodlee was always drawn to the way photography could capture an entire series of emotions in a single frame. This passion translated into a hobby as he backpacked through Europe after graduating from college. During this trip, he learned the mechanics of a camera and began to grow his hobby into a legitimate skill.

“I didn’t think it was a feasible career; I thought it was more of a hobby, until I actually got married myself and thought of doing wedding photography because of my own experiences.”

Despite his humble beginnings on a disposable camera at family events, he can now be spotted at weddings all over Colorado, toting no less than a fancy leather harness to secure up to three cameras to his body for efficiency and fast shooting throughout the day. He is working to provide quality photography through a business model that relies on the relationships he establishes with his clients.

Coming up on the one year anniversary of his business, Clancey James Creative, he is working to expand even further. His goal for this upcoming year is to diversify his client base and continue the upward trajectory that the business is moving in so far, all while remaining true to his approach of fairness and inclusivity.

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