NC PANDEMIC PROFILE: Rebecca Faulk

REBECCA FAULK (Red Bridge Photography)

Owner, Photographer

My name is Rebecca Faulk and I'm the owner of Red Bridge Photography. I photograph events, weddings and portraits.

When did you first feel the impact of the COVID-19 restrictions on your business? The 13th of March [2020] was the last wedding that I shot - and I’m gonna use air quotes around this – with a “normal guest count” and that was a normal guest count for a reception, not a normal guest count for the ceremony because the ceremony was at a local venue that was one of the first places that really imposed restrictions and shut down. We were limited to 40 people at the ceremony and that included vendors and staff of the venue - even though the venue was massive. Then we went to a local country club and had a throw down party with 275 of our closest friends so it all seemed very counterproductive.

Was that reception illegal? Technically? Yes. By then there were already gathering restrictions where we weren't supposed to 275 people at anything, but the reception went straight ahead. We did not wear masks then either, but I also didn't shake hands and had lots of hand sanitizer. But that's when we were still trying to figure out what the heck this thing was.

The following weekend, I was supposed to have a wedding where I was the only photographer and that one didn't happen because of the restrictions - even though pre-pandemic her guest count was only 40 people. But she had family that came in from South America and then this whole thing happened where we couldn't have the gatherings and even though they had all been together, her church slowly pulled out so they needed to have a place to have the ceremony, then her reception venue pulled out even though it was technically a private club or could operate as a restaurant. Since her family was already here and probably not gonna be able to come back for the reschedule date - could they afford it; would the country be open? I did an extended family session for them while they were all in town. Ultimately, the actual wedding was rescheduled. It had 3 other separate dates but 15 different adjustments to the wedding before it actually happened in July.

When this wedding finally did happen were you a participant and what did the wedding look like? Yes. I was the photographer. It was 10 guests at a church. Everybody wore a mask and when the bride and groom got to the front [of the church] to say their vows they could take their masks off but that was it. Then we did portraits, and some people wore their masks, and some people didn’t. Some people wanted to stay apart so there's a gap between people in the group photos. Then they went to dinner at a restaurant that was operation, and they had that group of 10 for dinner. It was way different than all the plans we had made. Even though – pre-COVID – they were only expecting 40 guests. I felt bad for them, but we got them married. I think in the end a lot of people are just happy that they got married.

What percentage of your business is weddings? Probably about 20% of Red Bridge Photography work is weddings, but 40% of non-Red Bridge Photography company income is second and associate shooting [at weddings] for other companies. And I do quite a bit of portrait work but even that was impacted by the pandemic.

In a normal year, on average, how many weddings do you participate in whether you’re the second photographer or the primary photographer? It's usually about 40, eh maybe 45 to 50 weddings a year. Some weekends I'm shooting two or three weddings: Friday, Saturday, Sunday; sometimes I'm shooting one. Except for holidays or January, February, early March when I don’t usually have very many.

How many weddings did you photograph last year during the pandemic? Four. 4.

Once the season started everything shut down. I picked up a few micro-ceremonies and I still have a few micro-ceremonies coming up. But money-wise micro-ceremonies are not the same. That said, I did pick up weddings because their normal guest count wedding somewhere out-of-state wasn't happening anymore and now, they are going to get married in NC and I got those referrals. Then, two weddings canceled. They postponed and postponed and postponed and then canceled.

In a situation where a couple cancels, are you refunding or offering alternative services? What’s your policy? One of my couples asked for a portrait session because she said that they wanted professional pictures. I've told her I’d be happy to do it. Put your [wedding] dress on, he’ll put on khakis and a polo and let's go do it. The other couple said ‘we understand that we don't get our retainer back; good luck to you. Peace out.’

I had one client that - originally pre pandemic - booked only one photographer for six hours at a wedding venue that was going to be impacted by COVID. She’s in the medical field and she knew she didn't want her family coming up from New York and gathering. She moved her wedding initially to February 2021 and I want to say in late October, early November she decided that this wasn’t changing anytime soon, and they moved their wedding up. All these steps and changes she made – she didn't tell me until she already done it! She was making decisions and wasn’t telling me until after the changes were made, and – luckily - I was available on that new date. Then she decided to move it again - forward - to the beginning of December – again without letting me know – and I ended up having to reschedule my day of mini-sessions that I scheduled for that day to accommodate the change.

So, they confirmed they’re getting married the first weekend in December, but then on Thanksgiving Eve her wedding venue was on the news. The venue declared bankruptcy and was now no longer hosting anything. This meant that, in a week and a half, we had to find her a new place to get married. And we did. The new place wasn’t really enough space for the 18 guests that she had but it was a make-it-work scenario because that’s what she could get in a week and a half. She went from ‘we'll have plenty of room at this wedding venue that I've paid $9,000 for’ to ‘I have to pay more money for another venue that is much smaller, and I have to accommodate all these space requirements and I’m still out $9,000.’ I felt so bad for her – it was a crappy situation - but she got married. And I was there, and I did what I was contracted to do.

There had to be a lot of pivots within weddings and in general this year.

Did the majority of your wedding work for 2020 get rescheduled to 2021 or did it get canceled?  I would say the majority of my wedding work was postponed or rescheduled to another date. Some of them rescheduled a few times and then the third or fourth time they decide to go ahead and do it, and then others have just outright canceled. The majority of the weddings have been postponed to another date but, as I mentioned earlier, people have been ‘meh’ about replying or like clueing me into the new plan. A lot of times I've had to reach out to them and say ‘hey, checking in to see how things are going. What's going on? Then I get the ‘well, we moved it to xyz date’ and I have to wonder if they were ever gonna tell me! A lot of people were doing things but not including me in the conversation and their reply was always ‘we hope you can make it’ and I’m always like: well, I can if you’d let me know!

The big thing over the last year was the amount of time lost in communication with clients and vendors and all the other adjustments - these are all things I can't charge for as a photographer. I’m not a planner! But a lot of these couples didn't have planners so the logistics seem to fall to me because I'm the only person who's in the wedding industry. I’m the only event pro.

You do a lot of non-wedding photography, too - portrait work and especially newborns - did you feel impact of COVID-19 there as well?  I did. I had people who booked newborn sessions pre-pandemic and we had to make adjustments.

One example: a client reached out because I’d photographed the family before (pre-COVID) and she's pregnant again with a little boy. This time she wants to do a newborn session with me because 1) they can afford it, 2) they didn’t do it with the other kid and 3) we have this great relationship. But this baby was diagnosed a few weeks before the due date with a heart condition so he was going to end up having to have major heart surgery within like two weeks of his birth and we're in the middle of a pandemic and we are now having to deal with this infective agent that I could potentially bring to this kid who’s super sick. She’s already paid the retainer and we had already started planning the session and obviously, now her doctors are saying it's not safe. I would have told her it's not safe either. She was really sorry and really disappointed, but I understood, and I was also really sorry but there was nothing we could do, so I lost out on that one.

I did have another session when I actually did go into the hospital and it was three weeks after we completely locked down. No visitors were allowed in the hospital at that time, and [to get permission for this session] we had to go all the way up the hospital chain of command. The baby was born sleeping, so they did permit me to come in and take pictures, but I like I said I had to go all the way up to the hospital administration. And the parents asked me are you comfortable doing this [because of COVID]? She knew I am a nurse, and I knew I’d be okay. I knew the steps to take when I got home, and I had an n95 mask. So, I was able to do the pictures and I'm so glad I did because my photos tell their story.

Those are the big highlights.

During shutdown, you got a notice from your payment processor that required you to make some changes to your business systems in the middle of the pandemic. Can you talk about that experience for a second? I had to change over to a different booking system in the middle of the pandemic because of an issue with the credit card processing company - Pay Junction - I had used since the beginning of my business – they were withholding funds.

At the very beginning [of COVID-19], I got the idea to run a print and product special. I was trying to bring in some cash. Everything was shutting down and money that I was anticipating is now not coming in. I'm trying to adjust, adjust, adjust, compensate. Pivot. Pivot. Pivot. In real time. And it's best to sell what you already have so here's a sale – 40% off! (I never run sales.) I had people taking advantage of the sale and I was anticipating the payout from those sales. Usually, Pay Junction would pay me out every day, sometimes within a few hours of the client’s payment being processed through their system. Once I had the funds, then I had to go buy the stuff the clients ordered. I got a large retainer for a wedding that I booked and the client paid the retainer via credit card, so I knew that payment was going to hit my bank account soon. And I was on the lookout for it but the money wasn’t showing up. Days days days days days go by and I'm freaking out because I don’t know where that money is. Is something wrong with my bank? What’s the hang up here? I started Googling and realized that Pay Junction was withholding payouts for small businesses that were deemed “high risk” during the pandemic; meaning, they deemed certain businesses were more like to have people trying to do chargebacks on payments made. Events industry businesses. Businesses who collected rent. Anyone who performed work in which customers were likely to demand a refund because now they're not going to be able to have their wedding or get the construction done that they wanted or whatever.

Pay Junction was anticipating that my customers were gonna start demanding chargebacks - even though in the 10 years that I have been with this company - I have never had a client do a chargeback. That should tell you how I conduct business. Nonetheless, Pay Junction was convicting us all. They ended up looking at a business’s average income over the past years to deem how much of a hold Pay Junction would place on that business’s account. For my company, they deemed that amount to be $1,500. So clients were paying out for the products that I was running the sale on and clients that were paying retainers or fees for sessions and weddings that were coming up but Pay Junction was holding all of those funds until the amount got above $1,500, and then they would pay out only whatever was over the $1,500 reserve. Pay Junction held $1,500 in reserve in their institution, which is not a bank, mind you. Whatever. Basically, they were anticipating that I wasn’t going to have enough money in my bank account if someone started doing a bunch of chargebacks. Thankfully, my reserve amount was not very high. I found out there was a tile company that a $55,000 hold on their account. It’s a pandemic - how can they operate when you're holding $55,000 of that company's money?

I spent days during this whole thing worried about money and where my next work is going to come from, and I found other people that this is happening to as well but it seemed at the time it was [a policy] exclusive to Pay Junction. I spent days on the phone with a different people and eventually Pay Junction either saw that I was creating a problem for them online because I got an article posted on Vice News or they saw that I was blabbing my mouth and they released all my funds. I got a phone call that went straight to voicemail; literally, the phone didn't even ring it was just voicemail pop-up. It said they were releasing my money and it was in my account by that Friday. Sure enough it was paid out. I got all the documentation I needed and then moved to a different company. Pronto.

It was not the ideal time. It was not the time – during a pandemic - that I wanted to set up a new CRM. It was not the time I wanted to have to figure out who was the best new credit card processor to go with. This was not the time. I had all these other things going on, but this was the time that I had to do it. It was really super stressful, and they weren’t making it easier on small business because it was a lot of small companies that they were doing this to.

How have your business practices changed in response to COVID-19? Yes, in the studio in Raleigh, which is where I photograph all the babies, I’ve worn a mask for all the sessions. It's in my home; I'm the only person who lives there. It would have been a way different response if someone else lived with me or if I had children in the house. I would not have done it. I would not have continued sessions in the house if someone else lived there or I had kids. But I live by myself and so I'll wear a mask and usually the parents will, and the kids are exempt from wearing mask anyway.

I limit myself to only one studio session a day now to allow for cleaning and sanitizing and drying of everything. My props - I treat my props a little bit different now, too. Anything that I use gets sanitized and goes into a seven-day quarantine itself. The props - especially the porous ones - like these little wooden props - I can spray them down with Lysol, but I can't get in the nooks and crannies, so I set them aside for seven-days. Then the laundry procedures are still the same as it was pre-pandemic. But pre-pandemic I was also a clean freak about it all.

And I'm gonna keep masks around for all the baby sessions until the end of time.

With respect to weddings and larger events because I know you assist with corporate too -  what protocols are you taking to reduce or prevent the spread of COVID? I find at weddings it is hard to do the distancing but it’s not even the guests – it’s the vendors. It’s beyond me when they don’t want to distance; they don’t want to wear a mask; they don’t want to take any precautions.

I have two sides of my brain: my nurse brain in my business-person brain. My nurse brain is telling me all the stuff that's going to happen with this pandemic and all the ways that I can get sick and all the things that could happen to all these people that I come in contact with; all the ways it's going to impact me and my brain just like spins out of control. My business brain is like, ‘eh, it’ll be fine.’ So, I've tried to operate in a happy medium.

The studio in Apex I share with another photographer, so we've been in the same pod and made sure to communicate. And he’s done a good job communicating about people he’s come in contact with, somebody who’s possibly had an exposure. It's easier to regulate between the two of us. The third person that is normally in our office hasn't been there on a routine basis and when he does come in, he wears a mask and when he takes the mask off it's only to make his promotional videos, and he has only done those maybe like three or four times in the last year in the studio, so for the most part we have limited exposure from him.

As far as wedding protocols, I would work the wedding and then quarantine myself for 14 days and I would quarantine myself in the week leading up to it, too. But I would still go to the grocery store because I’ve got to have food because I was not going to leave the house for two weeks after I got home from the wedding. I would leave my house to walk the dog, but not have any interactions with people.

This January, I had two weddings and quarantined for 14 days after each of them. I didn't see my family for Christmas because my brother-in-law was diagnosed with strep throat and I didn’t want to take that to a wedding or getting strep and COVID. Christmas sucked. Thanksgiving was great until I got home, and I got an email saying that I’d been exposed to COVID at a wedding I worked the week before. Well, crap, I may have exposed my entire family. But that ended up being okay. We were outside for that wedding and we didn’t have much direct, unmasked contact with her so the likelihood was very small that we’d have gotten COVID.

What would you say is the most challenging thing about being in the events industry this past year?  The pivot. Personally, the pivot is: how am I going to make it work? I've had to go through more bureaucratic bull crap paperwork than I've ever had to go through in my life, and I've filed business, complex taxes. But this is a whole new level, and not knowing what kind of support I might get, since I’m self-employed so technically [normally] wouldn’t qualify for unemployment.

The whole plan when I opened my business 10 years ago was: don't take out any money to pay for things you don't need. Earn the money first, and then you buy the stuff. But then I didn't have any money [during a pandemic]. So, I had to pivot to make it work. That was challenging. That was a lot.

Also, as I mentioned, I'm going to continue to wear masks for all sessions, newborn up to one year but I might only do masks during cold and flu season for babies six months and higher because that connection - seeing if I'm happy or I'm playing around with them - is very important in those milestone months. If you look at my baby work in the past year, I get a lot of blank expressions and normally I'm pretty good at getting the baby to mirror me, but a lot of the expressions are slightly off-camera because they’re looking at the parents or they're looking at me but there's no smile [because I’m wearing a mask]. I feel like I need to put like an asterisk beside all my work for this year because normally I'm able to get a kid to smile at me. That’s been really challenging.

Then, personally, I had to put down a dog. It was me and my dog - my best friend - she was sick, almost seventeen years old. She declined quickly in April and I had to put her down, so I went from having a constant friend to nobody. But, now, I have Ruby. And, she’s an angel.

What on the business side of things has improved during the pandemic? Business-wise I feel like I’m not as rushed. Yeah, I'm broke – broke-r. (laughter) But I can give clients a little bit more time and attention because I'm not as frazzled about at all.

And then, personally, I've been able to have time to clean stuff up and get rid of stuff and clean. I've been in my house for 15 years and it’s about time I went through stuff again. Got rid of a bunch of clothes. I was able to calm and relax myself a little bit more. I feel better. Sure, it's been bad. To not be able to go see friends and not to hug my mother because I'm so afraid that I'm gonna give her COVID. The fear of getting someone sick it's always in my head. I hope that maybe this is a good thing because I feel like people are more cognizant of sanitation in general. Washing their hands more.

Do you anticipate that 2021 will be a good year for you? I didn't feel like 2020 was going to be my best year ever like some people did. I felt like it was going to continue to be a growing year. I was actually getting to a point where I was booking more baby stuff and that’s what I wanted. I was having to do less convincing to get people to book because they were already sold [on my services]. I had tuned into my best, ideal client and then COVID happened and everybody’s income level suddenly changed. They’re all happy to have a job and holding onto their money because they’re unsure what’s going to happen.

Are anticipating a post-pandemic baby boom? I’m a statistics person and I've heard there isn't going to be one. I've heard that births were down last year. I don't know if that trend is going to continue this year or not. Normally, I'll see a boom after an ice storm or hurricanes, when people are home and bored. Guess we’ll have to wait and see!

What is one thing that you want the general public to know about the event industry after coming out of the pandemic? We essentially went for 365 days without income. We have to all start over again. It’s like a massive reset button on something that you’ve been building a building for 10 years and you have to start over again. Hire us. We know what we're doing.