Hello!

My love story with photography was one that began well before  I was old enough to realize. As a young girl,   I realized the importance of photographs and the memories they help preserve. Around age 7 or 8,  I began collecting old pictures of my family, many taken before I was even born.   I loved hearing the background story behind each polaroid, featuring beloved members of my family, some of which I never got the pleasure to meet.   I was mesmerized by the fact that a single image could be so meaningful, so precious, and so nostalgic. As cliché as it is, it's absolutely true - a picture really is worth a thousand words.

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Fast forward to more than 20 years later - It wasn’t until then that God connected the dots for me between my childhood and my destiny. Before that, Photography  was never something I had planned for myself. Jobless in the midst of the crazy 2020 pandemic, I desired to find a creative outlet. With my mind set on starting my own YouTube channel, mother and brother bought me my first DSLR camera, and changed my life.

 

Even though  I now owned a camera, professional photography was still the furthest thing from my mind. One day on a whim, I was asked to take pictures after an intimate wedding ceremony of one of my mother’s friends. I jokingly remember telling my mom in the car, “Well I’m just gonna make a Facebook page and call

it "Shot By Shanté”-- and that’s the moment that it started.

 

  I spent the following years photographing anything  I could - hundreds of Birthday portrait sessions, Infant sessions, product photography, headshots, events, and family and holiday sessions before I truly fell in love with wedding photography.  It gives me much pride to capture authentic love stories for those who believe that the greatest of these is love.

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-Shanté

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