Today we’d like to introduce you to Melissa Fabri.
Hi Melissa, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I’m a Florida native but born to European parents, French and Belgian. Born in Miami, I moved to Orlando with my mom when I was 8 and graduated from Dr. Phillips High School in 1999. In 2005 I decided to take a 3-month “break” and go see my family in the south of France. The thing is, I met my husband Julien and ended up staying 17 years! We had our two beautiful kids in 2010 and 2011. Life was crazy!!! Photography had always been a passion of mine… I come from a broken home, so family pictures were a huge part of me. After having my kids, I found myself documenting their each and every milestone and decided to make my passion my job. I started my business in 2014 in a small town in the south of France called Chateaurenard, and it immediately took off! I was able to stay home and raise my kids, all while growing my small business and making a name for myself in our little town. I wanted to do strictly families, but word of mouth got me doing weddings, baptisms, events, and corporate photography (McCormick and L’Oréal as well as local businesses) as well. My small business was doing great! In 2021 I started a sister company to Melissa Fabri Photography called Mademoiselle Boudoir to help women of all ages and sizes embrace their own unique beauty… empowering women to love their selves and their image.
Later that year, my husband and I (while drinking mojitos on the Mediterranean… yeah, glam right?) made the decision to move (back) to Orlando. Call it COVID or midlife crisis, it just hit us! We figured that for our kids, it was now or never.
June 2022, we made that big move! We got rid of pretty much everything we owned to start over, just the four of us and our Jack Russel Rocco 🙂 A new page in our book of life!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I thought moving home would be easy! But spending 17 years of my young adult life in another country changes a lot of things! We made amazing friends that became family, we lived in our house for 13 years and knew all of the neighbors, my husband managed a company with his family, and I had my small business. In small towns, everybody knows everybody and we felt safe. So needless to say, moving hasn’t been easy, especially on the mind! Having to start over completely, professionally, and personally! Orlando is a big city. So, trying to make a place for yourself can be overwhelming and difficult.
We knew it would be difficult, but when you are actually in it, you feel like you’ll never make it out of that dark place!
But there is always that light at the end of the tunnel! We just have to keep moving forward and all of those puzzle pieces will start falling in place! It was a challenge we chose to do and we’re doing it together. It has truly brought our family closer together and I am 100% sure that I and my business will grow from this change as well!
My husband, who is still waiting on his green card and work visa, has been helping me in building my business back up, and in the process, we are creating a whole new concept to introduce into my business for weddings and corporate events!
As of now, Mademoiselle Boudoir hasn’t made it back (just because there is so much to do for Families and weddings), but 2023 should be seeing some boudoir on the feed! Stay tuned!
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
So, I majored in Communications specializing in image analysis at Avignon University in France in 2006. Not knowing at all at that point that I wanted to be a photographer. I am self-taught but well-surrounded. In 2014, when I started, I had the support of my clients and a couple friend photographers (Jessica Liane who is an Orlando-based photographer, and Michelle Morris… both middle and high school friends) but mainly tried to figure it out alone. I am a natural light lifestyle photographer. I specialize in Families and lifestyle maternity and newborn and shooting in-home or outdoor sessions. Although weddings are a thing of the past for me, I still do elopements and small intimate weddings… and the occasional bigger wedding 🙂
In 2019 I started workshops in Family, wedding, and portrait photography with the Groovy Photographer Bootcamp in the southwest of France and met a family of French photographers that have become great friends today.
I am surrounded by photographers who inspire and motivate me every day! I also got a chance to meet and spend a week with the amazing duo Erika and Lanny Mann at a workshop in the southwest of France right before moving to the US. I continue to surround myself with other local photographers to grow together and inspire and motivate each other! I am a firm believer in “Community over Competition”. We are artists and each of us offer something totally different to our clients! As photographers, we learn from each other and grow to create even more amazing images for our clients. It’s sooooo important to be surrounded by these amazing people.
Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
1. Surround yourself with people who build you up, who support you, who believe in you! You are capable of ANYTHING you put your mind to! No matter how hard you think it’ll be! It will be hard, you will cry, you WILL want to give up. Those people you chose to surround you will help you through this!
2. Don’t be afraid to learn!!! You are never too old to learn new things. There are so many ways today to learn a new technique or a new trade.
3. Challenge yourself! EVERYDAY! If life is too easy, you get stuck in this routine and you’ll never learn. Open yourself up and learn from others, go down that road less travelled and learn how to get through it. You’ll find that you are stronger than you think you are.
4. LOVE WHAT YOU DO!
Pricing:
- from $450
Contact Info:
- Website: www.melissafabriphotography.com
- Instagram: @melissafabriphotography | @mademoiselleboudoir.photo
- Facebook: @melissafabriphotography | @mademoiselle boudoir
Image Credits
@melissafabriphotography
@melissafabriphotography
