Not only does Sugar Six define my business of 15 years photographing babies, families and weddings but it also has personal meaning as well. Sugar Six has grown from a tiny thought of "what if I could run my own business?" to a thriving photography company and portrait studio. I've worked for years to build my business and reputation and i'm very proud of my beginnings. I’ve been involved in photography for as long as I can remember. My father wasa professional photographer while I was growing up and I’ve always been the friend with the nice camera who you invite to events hoping to get some beautiful photos out of the deal. Despite my photographer roots, I was sure I was destined to work a corporate job. Cubical land was calling! I graduated with a Bachelors Degree and then went on to begin my MBA and worked my way up the corporate ladder. I had a few kids, acquired some stuff, a hectic crazy schedule and I was on my way to building my empire so to speak. Life was good until it suddenly stopped on a dime. Life seems to happen that way. My mother in law very unexpectedly passed away from an aggressive brain cancer in her early 50s. It was a pivotal moment in our lives and my husband and I decided we needed to focus on living life to the fullest because you truly never know what tomorrow holds. I quit my job, pulled our girls out of daycare so we could spend more time as a family, and we decided I’d be a stay at home mom; Hooray! Well that lasted about a day and I realized I was a lousy stay at home mom, my slightly obsessive brain needed more to keep busy and thus Sugar Six Photography was born.  

When we were handling my mother in law's belongings after she passed away we found all sorts of unexpected things. You notice things in someone's house once they are gone that you never noticed before. While cleaning the kitchen I noticed that on top of her cabinets she had an extensive collection of sugar jars. I thought they were cute but added them to the pile of things to donate since we were overwhelmed with belongings. A few weeks passed, the house was cleared out, and the belonging distributed to her loved ones. We were tasked with having a large garage sale to selloff the rest of her estate. In the garage sale pile were the sugar jars, and as I sat alone in her garage, sad that she couldn't be with us to see that we had taken her passing to heart and made great changes in our lives, I started to clean the sugar jars. To my surprise inside each one was cash! Some had just $10-$20 and some had $100-$200! My husband and I discussed what we should do with this little gift of money from her and we decided it was fitting that that money, about $600, be the seed money to buy my first digital camera (before then I used old school film) and get my business off the ground. Money was tight so I told myself that if I could build a business up from $600 with zero debt then I was meant to have my own business after all.

When it came time to name the business for real, I operated as my initials for a bit while I spent months agonizing over potential business name combinations. One day it just hit me, Sugar Six! Sugar to represent the sweet gift she had left us & six to symbolize the small amount of money I had built my entire business upon. It grew on me and I have to say I still love it to this day. I think of the name Sugar Six as a way to thank all of the people who have touched my life and since left it. Sadly as I get older that list gets longer and holding onto the memories becomes even more important. I have been lucky to have had some really amazing people in my life and every time I tell the story of how Sugar Six became a thing I remember that.