Are you drawn to light and airy photography? Or dark and moody? True to life? Or vintage filters? Wedding photographer and Amative Creative founder Andrea Lewis loves them all. Her wedding photography and videography business is a compilation of 40 talented artists, each offering a special skill set. Andrea works diligently to match couples with their perfect photographer or videographer and personally edits every image herself to ensure the desired look is met.
 
“I edit in different ways because each wedding, person, season, and day has a unique look. And honestly, different editing styles accentuate different things, and can make or break the image,” Andrea says.
 
It’s the lighting on your wedding day, the prominent colors people wear, the time of year, seasonal hues, and the time of day that play a dramatic role in how your wedding photos look. All of these factors affect how photo editing styles are applied and the tone of the images that land in your wedding album, Andrea says.
 
Amative Creative factors in these variables while allowing couples to select their desired style of shooting and editing. The process begins with an interview and personality assessment, which Andrea uses to pair couples with the appropriate artist from her talented team.
 
“It shouldn’t be about me or the photographer and whatever predetermined label we’ve put on our photography,” she says. “At the end of the day, it’s your wedding, these are your images, and they’re going on your walls.”
 
Andrea first picked up a camera as a child, watching her mother and grandmother shoot with classic Minoltas. On her 18th birthday, Andrea’s older brother gifted her a Fuji digital camera, launching her pursuit of photography and spurring a studio arts degree and MFA in photography and graphic design from Liberty University.
 
“It was my first real big girl camera. I still have it,” she says. “It was mind-blowing. It was instantaneous satisfaction — I didn’t have to wait a month to see what I shot.”
 
After dabbling in nonprofit photography, spending some time in the corporate marketing world, shooting friends’ weddings, and becoming a highly desired local photographer, with a marriage, and two babies in between, Andrea realized she wanted to pursue wedding photography, but didn’t want to miss weekend family time. From there, Amative Creative was born.
 
“Speaking for myself and for everyone else on our team, we love to celebrate weddings with our couples,” Andrea says. “We’re there to capture the silly crazy random candid moments but also to create lifelong heirloom masterpieces that are going to go above fireplaces.”
 
Andrea loves getting that call or text from a couple years later, letting her know it’s their anniversary and they’re crying tears of happiness watching their wedding video.
 
“I’m not just taking pretty pictures. I’m helping their lives be a little better. The fact that I was able to make them remember their wedding day in the best way possible, is a beautiful thing.”