Every story starts somewhere, and ours is no exception. There are two questions Ally and I get all the time. The first: “What’s your favorite place to travel?” (We’ll get to that soon enough.) The second, usually paired with a grin, is: “How did you ever get into this?” More often than not, it’s followed with, “You have one of the coolest jobs in the world!”

I have to admit, we really do. We get to travel, teach, and do what we love for a living. Sure, it’s not all perfect and somedays, it can be quite overwhelming and difficult, just like any job, but we never take for granted how fortunate and blessed we are to do this with each other , with our amazing team behind and with us, and with the people we meet along the way.

But this life wasn’t always in the plans. Back in 2011, things looked a lot different. The economy was still reeling from the financial crisis, and the housing market had just about hit rock bottom.

For years, Ally and I ran a high-end portrait studio. We specialized in fine art family portraits that are considered heirloom wall pieces to be handed down generation to generation. Our portraiture was well known and considered art by the families we photographed. We focused our work on showing the relationships of a family unit. Each piece done in a specific brown tone with the families wearing long sleeve black shirts. This allowed the viewer to focus on the lightest part of the image, the faces and hands and the relationship of the family we were photographing.

We kept it exclusive, only ten sessions a month, with an average sale running $5,000 to $6,000 and it was not uncommon for $10,000 portrait sessions. Then, almost overnight in 2008, half our business vanished. Contractors, real estate agents, families with home equity credit lines, gone. I still remember the phones just stopped ringing in May of that year. Dead silence

We still had loyal clients, and there were plenty of people with money left. But suddenly, no one was spending it as freely. I remember the day we set a new sales record, over $16,000 for a single session. We celebrated for a minute, and then reality hit: even that wasn’t enough to keep our heads above water. It felt surreal. Here we were, two of the most well-known portrait photographers in the country, and we were barely scraping by

There were plenty of reasons for our high bills such as divorces, mortgages, and situations that were thrown at us. But that’s another story. The bottom line: I was sitting there after our biggest sale ever, realizing I still couldn’t provide for our family. That low point, as crushing as it felt, forced us to rethink everything.

And yet, that’s when McKay Photography Academy was born. Out of the ashes of our toughest days came the spark for something new. What felt like the end wound up being the beginning of a whole new adventure.