Fan the Flame

Once upon a time, there lived a ruggedly hand­some Ukrain­ian boy named Vitaliy. At the very pubes­cent age of 17 years, he said good­bye to mommy and daddy and hopped on the next flight to the Land of the Free. While attend­ing school and cor­rect­ing his thick East­ern Euro­pean accent, he spent the major­ity of his time study­ing Amer­i­can cul­ture. His first room­mate was a South­ern boy from Alabama who didn’t exactly help him with per­fect­ing his pro­nun­ci­a­tion skills. He then was immersed deeper into the cul­ture by par­tak­ing in large amounts of Kim­chi with the local Korean res­i­dents. If you were to quiz him on any his­tory of Rock N’ Roll, you would leave con­vinced the boy grew up in Amer­ica. He had thick side burns, a coarse uni­brow, and a laugh that was uniquely his own. Just when he thought that he had con­quered the typ­i­cal life of an Amer­i­can, he crossed paths with a high-spirited blondy from the Mid-West.

She blew into his path the way a tor­nado rips across the plains of Kansas. He hadn’t expected it for a moment. She had on sweat­pants, her hair pulled back in a pony­tail, a slight hint of makeup on her face, and of all things, she had braces. The girl had braces in col­lege. But there was a spark. Her pas­sion for life ignited an area of Vitaliy’s heart that had been put on a shelf and was likely col­lect­ing dust at this point. He was a senior, dis­ap­pointed with life, and ready to move on with­out a clue where that meant. And along came the fan that would ignite his flame.

The two quickly fell in love and soon enough became hus­band and wife. They quickly found that their pas­sions for pho­tog­ra­phy and peo­ple were the per­fect com­bi­na­tion to embark on the jour­ney of build­ing their very own pho­tog­ra­phy busi­ness. How­ever, they soon real­ized that they wanted their busi­ness to be about some­thing much more than just pretty pic­tures. They wanted to tell sto­ries, real people’s sto­ries. You see, the lit­tle love story I shared above is only a glimpse into the real story of Vitaliy and the Mid-West Blondy, whose name is Can­dace. Their story runs much deeper then uni­brows and braces or the clash of cul­tures. Their story is filled with tragedy, pain, redemp­tion and joy. They have a dream today. They have a dream to not only share their own sto­ries through words and pic­tures, but they want to share your story through words and pic­tures. They have a firm belief that each one of us has a story worth telling. A story that will not only change your life by shar­ing it, but it will change the life of oth­ers by hear­ing it.

If you have a pas­sion for pho­tog­ra­phy, for peo­ple, for sto­ry­telling, for life, then come join us in our jour­ney. We can’t take this jour­ney with­out you. A story is only a story if there is some­one out their to hear it. Be the fan that keeps our flame going and burn­ing brighter and brighter as the years go on.

Click here to join the jour­ney!