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If you've already decided you want "6 hours of coverage" for your wedding, you don't know shit about fuck. (Thank you Rose a la Ozarks for that line.) Here's the short version: you can't know your hours yet, and that's fine. Full breakdown on the blog.

I used to hate the phrase "perception is reality." Now I live by it. A few years ago I went public with my politics and lost 12% of my following, plus a handful of signed contracts. It came back bigger. Down the street, a small business made its own alignment public through who they chose to sponsor, and now they're finding out what that costs. Brand alignment cuts both ways. You don't get to be surprised by which side of that blade lands on you.

I've built and failed a business, built and sold a couple businesses, and I am now scaling creative businesses well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales a year - and have done so in art forward spaces with creative entrepreneurship for nearly 20 years. You can take my advice or leave it. WRITTEN BY COURTNEY SPECHT | photographer, writer, speaker, mentor | KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI Ten or eleven years ago "community over competition" was really a thing. Rising Tide

I've built and failed a business, built and sold a couple businesses, built am now scaling businesses well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales a year - and have done so in creative spaces with creative entrepreneurship for nearly 20 years. Take my advice or leave it. WRITTEN BY COURTNEY SPECHT | photographer, writer, speaker, mentor | KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI I get a lot of "can I pick your brain about marketing?" I love that, I genuinely do. But more often than

When couples start planning their engagement session, they tend to reach for the obvious — the location that photographs beautifully, the backdrop they've seen in someone else's gallery. What Michael and Marisa's Kansas City session taught us is that the right place and the prettiest place are rarely the same thing.

Photographers know this phrasing well, we see it in Facebook groups, neighborhood apps, community boards, basically anywhere people gather online to ask for recommendations: "Hey! Looking for a photographer for maybe thirty minutes. We just want a few quick photos. Nothing crazy, shouldn't cost an arm and a leg. Any recommendations?" If you're not in the industry, that sounds completely reasonable, truthfully. You know roughly how long you think you want someone around, you

A Collaborative Giveaway from Courtney Specht | Stag & Bird Curated Photo Experiences + Lindsey Chevalier | Fox Fire Tattoos at Golden Stag Tattoo Some moments in life pass quickly. A proposal, a promise, the realization that you’ve found the person you’re going to build something forever with. Most couples celebrate that chapter with a handful of engagement photos done the way they think they're supposed to do it and a celebratory dinner. But some stories deserve more than

A Must Read for photographers building their businesses and finding their footing beyond being an artist. Written by Courtney Specht | Stag & Bird Curated Photo Experiences All summer long, the studios in my building emptied. While my husband and I toiled away at refurbishing windows and walls in my space, my neighbors just left. Backdrops rolled up. Light stands folded. Keys turned in. Photographers deciding, often without ceremony, that this wasn’t what they thought it wou

A Boudoir Photographer’s Workshop | February 7, 2026 | Kansas City Boudoir photography sits at an intersection most genres never touch. It’s intimate. It’s vulnerable. And when it’s done well, it’s deeply human. When it’s done poorly, it can feel hollow, unsafe, or performative. Creating the Art of Intimacy was built because too many photographers are being taught how to pose bodies without being taught how to hold space . This workshop exists to slow things down and get ba

Without Starting a Small Domestic Incident I photograph teenagers for a living. Seniors, young adults, kids who love the camera and kids who barely tolerate it. I'm also a mom to a teenager and a nearly teen. It's no walk in the park, I'll tell ya that. I’ve watched confidence rise and collapse in the space of a single swipe. I’ve seen what happens when a teen feels seen and what happens when they feel exposed. This isn’t about aesthetics or trends. It’s about understanding t

This Is Usually the Part Where People Start Deciding Every year around this time, the conversations shift - it's officially engagement season - meaning real decisions about wedding planning is just around the corner. People stop casually browsing and start asking better questions. Not louder questions. More specific ones. They’re no longer trying to figure out what they should want. They’re trying to figure out what actually fits. That’s usually when they land here. Stag & B

by Stag & Bird Photo – Kansas City Wedding & Elopement Storytellers for the Weird, Wild, and Unapologetically in Love Microwedding on family property in Raymore, MO. You’re newly engaged. The confetti is still on the counter, your coffee is cold, and every Kansas City wedding inspiration board has now multiplied into twenty. You start searching for venues, vendors, and pricing, and something becomes clear: a traditional large wedding might not feel like the kind of celebratio

If you’re here, chances are you had (or are planning) a wedding or elopement that didn’t fit the template. Maybe you wore black, eloped in a tattoo shop, used taxidermy as decor or had a mosh pit instead of a slow dance. You created a day that felt like you , and now you’d love to see it featured on Rock n Roll Bride, Dancing With Her, Quirky Weddings UK, Weird Wild Wed or another alternative publication. First off, I get it. As an alternative wedding photographer and elopeme

Stag & Bird Photo - where alternative senior photos are the norm and weird is welcomed. When a parent hops into a Facebook group and asks...

Kansas City Cannabis Wedding Photography - Stag & Bird Photo Weddings don’t have to follow dusty rulebooks or keep grandma’s ghost happy....

Not all $4,500 wedding photography packages are created equal. As a Kansas City wedding photographer, I’ve seen vendors promise the moon—12 hours of coverage, film, video, and more—for a price that barely covers expenses. Between today’s economic fuckery and a race-to-the-bottom mentality, couples deserve to know what their investment really buys. Here’s why $4,500 should mean thoughtful, sustainable artistry—not bargain-bin promises.

Leo stuns at Vaile Mansion. Give me your shy. Your bold. Your off-beat souls aching to be seen. The quiet kids with wild ideas. The loud...

If you’re here, you’ve probably figured out that we’re not the “smile pretty and tilt your head” kind of photography studio. Stag & Bird...

Imagine my surprise when checking out one of my favorite wedding magazines website - just a scrolling along and BAM! There’s my girls...

Life Is Like a Camera: Focus, Capture, Develop, and Take Another Shot There’s something about a camera that teaches you more about life...