Meet Makayla Lynn | Wedding and Lifestyle Photographer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Makayla Lynn and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Makayla, can you tell us more about your background and the role it’s played in shaping who you are today?
I am originally from upstate New York, but moved to North Carolina with my family after 9/11, when the company my dad worked for had to shut down because of the attack. I have lived in North Carolina ever sense! My family was a bit of a nomadic family, and we moved almost every single year of my life. I guess that is where I get my travel bug from!

My childhood was very untraditional. My parents struggled with addiction and mental illness, so my siblings and I were on own from a very young age. While I would never wish my lack of a childhood on anyone else, I am so thankful for the determination and independence it gave me. I developed the ability to figure out what I wanted, and do whatever it took to get it. I learned how to motivate and self manage, without the need for someone to be constantly looking over my shoulder to keep me on task.

Thanks to all of those life lessons, I was prepared to jump into full time small business ownership, even without any proper experience. I knew that I wanted to capture other peoples beautiful moments, and I knew I wanted to do it for myself. At the end of the day, I knew I could depend on and trust myself to do what I needed to do to succeed, because I had been doing that for myself my whole life.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Being and wedding and lifestyle photographer is literally the BEST job. I still can’t believe this is what I get to do every single day.

I love taking photos ever since the first flip phone came out with a camera. The selfies were unnumbered. So dang many. Once the iPhone came out, it was game over. I was everyones iPhone photographer. Getting to this point was absolutely not easy. I am pretty sure this is the hardest I have ever worked in my life, I have a really strict boss (lol it’s me).

I was working in restaurant management when COVID hit and was laid off when the whole world shut down. I needed a way to be able to make money to pay my bills, because unemployment wasn’t covering everything. I had gotten a camera for Christmas the year prior, and in April of 2020 I decided to try my hand at working it. I had never used a real camera before so it was very intimidating. I started by just taking fun pictures of my friends, and it kinda spiraled from there. My business blew up so fast and I was so overwhelmed and had no idea what I was doing.

By April of 2021, my business had grown so much that I had to quit my full time childcare job to jump full time into photography. Since that first shoot in April of 2020, I have had the immense honor of shooting 33 weddings, and well over 500 portrait and lifestyle sessions, and I am still counting! Which is so CRAZY to say, I literally cannot believe it.

Learning how to balance my job and my personal life is still really hard for me. There is no clear boundary of work and home when you work for yourself, so I am still overcoming the challenge of setting those boundaries. I’ve learned so much about the boring business stuff that I never knew about, the thrilling conversations about taxes are probably the best (lol). Honestly, I still don’t know what I am doing. I am just out here faking it till I make it, that is just how life goes sometimes, but I am out here and I am putting in the dang work.

What sets me apart is my candidness. I am so incredibly open and vulnerable with my clients and following. I don’t pretend to have it all together and I don’t worry about my feed looking aesthetically pleasing. I just focus on being authentic and making people happy. I will cry with you, I will laugh with you, heck, I will even compare anxiety meds and dosages with you – because that is just life.

I want people to know that life isn’t perfect. We can pretend it is by taking the perfect photo and adding the perfect edit. I can photoshop the imperfections and make the sky sunny when it is cloudy, but that isn’t real life. Real life is chaos, and sometimes chaos is beautiful. Capture your real life. Capture the good and the bad. Capture the imperfections, the fussy kids, the hair blowing in the wind, because THAT is real life, and it is beautiful.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Ooooo this is a hard one (lol), I am definitely more of a homebody, but I definitely have my favorite spots. I live in the country outside of Charlotte, NC. It’s only about a 35 minute drive to city center!

I would absolutely start by taking them to brunch at Tupelo Honey in Uptown! The blueberry jam on their homemade biscuits is to die for!

After that I would take them to a local brewery. There are soooo many good ones to choose from in the Charlotte area. I love going to the ones that have live music playing.

For dinner we would of course have to go to Pinky’s Westside Grill. Their fried chicken sandwich and waffle fries with pimento cheese is literally the best food. They also have the BEST banana pudding in the whole dang city, I swear.

To end the night we would go to a rooftop parking deck with the best view of Charlotte and watch the sunset between the buildings, literally one of my favorite places in the city to just relax. Also a great photo spot!

Charlotte has so many good things to offer, but I love staying in my small town too. Our local ice cream shop, SCOOPS has the best chocolate peanut butter ice cream, and our little restaurants have such good food and service.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I want to thank my family for always being my number one supporters and hyping all of my work up. While we have weird family dynamics and are so dysfunctional, you guys love me and are always there to compliment and boost my work. Thank you for accepting me for who I am and watching me as I navigate through the twists and turns of my life.

I want to thank my mom. The woman who gave me life. The woman who I butted heads with the most, and the one who always loved me in her own ways. The woman who my business is named after, Ronda Lynn Bradley. Thank you for giving me my attitude full of fire, my sass, and my will power. Thank you for always telling me how you knew I would succeed. I will carry that with me everyday. I will carry it with me that I knew wholeheartedly that you were so proud of the business I had built and the life I created for myself. I miss you every single day, and I wish you were still here with me. I wish I could tell you about the fact I am literally typing up an interview for a magazine article right now. You would be shouting it from the mountain tops and bragging to all you friends. I hope you’re telling Jesus all about it right now. I love you mom.

Website: www.makaylalynncreative.com

Instagram: @makaylalynncreativeco

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/makaylalynncreativeco