 Hey, this is Michelle Getzinger here and I'm with Candidly Yours. This is Mike Leonardi and we just want to see how you got started in the business. Forever. Forever? Yeah. It sounds cliche, but pretty much my whole life I had, you know, the Fisher Price camera as a kid and my mom says I ran around and took, you know, photos of people's feet. Did you go to school for it? No. I failed a course actually in college. Yeah, I did. It's still in my transcripts. I got mad that the teacher failed me. Everything was fine except there was one project I couldn't figure out. It was all filmed back then and I couldn't figure it out. She failed me and it's still there and here we are. Here we are, full time for four years and on the side with weddings since 2007, so. So what's your specialty? You don't always have to go to school, kids. That's right. Messed up. Specialty has become this, the real estate listings. I work for some market tech firms and kitchen designers and planners and I've done home inspection things because of the roof. They don't want to go up on the roof, so I get the drone up, but it started out with weddings from a paid standpoint and about 200 and some weddings later in a couple different countries. I've slowed that down. I think the market's changing a little bit with that or at least for me and the real estate's kept me just busier than I probably should be. Yeah, and I appreciate you've done a lot of shoots for me. Thank you. You haven't said you've passed me around the office pretty well. You're always ready to finish you around the office. Use me and abuse me and sell the houses and that's okay. No, it's been a fun ride. Yeah. So I'm a little bit different I think than some people because I think there's this potential misconception you have to use a tripod and bring fancy lighting and everything else and you don't. You just have to know how to make compositions. So here with the wide angle lens, I'm pretty much half of this, you know, big, big window, feature window, whatever you want to call it and almost the whole kitchen. So my flash bounces backwards, it'll hit this wall, fill in and my camera settings are all, you know, perfectly fine to have this exposed correctly. So I'll take it. And if you want to kind of creep over my shoulder, we can do that. But, you know, the cameras nowadays, there's a leveling line in here. So I know that everything's nice and straight and, you know, that was the shot we just took. How did you pick your camera? So I was married to Canon for 12 years. I was in love with Canon and the last wedding I did last year, I was just kind of sick of the pain and I mean, you know, you got the camera so you probably realized too. But everything just seemed crooked because it was heavy. And everything's kind of going towards mirrorless technology. So I did probably three months worth of research and just YouTube and reviews and everything. And I finally went with the Fuji X-T3 and I bought their whole lineup of everything I need and another body and all this other stuff from batteries. And really haven't looked back, you know, I got rid of what some people would say is even better equipment for this but it's lighter and easier to carry and I just, I love it. I haven't looked back. So yeah, I mean hopefully everything keeps going that direction because I don't have any of the Canon left so I just go, you know, reshop but yeah, it's been good. Which has been your favorite project that you've worked on? And I'm sorry if I'm putting you on this spot. No, that's fine. That's what I guess it's all about. Yeah, I forgot makeup too, so you know, I hope we're okay. Is the lighting okay in here or do I look like a raccoon? Favorite project, that's a tough question. I mean, I did a wedding in Turks and Caicos which is pretty hard to top and one in Mexico for an old friend of mine have done some things where people have come back to me and said, hey, you know, this one photo was super special and grandma passed away and that's what we kind of had on display and that's like super touching. But even like as simple as a house is super important because without good representation and good marketing on your end and teaming up with me to do the photos, you know, people aren't going to maybe come back and see it or come to see it in the first place. So even the real estate listings are fun, but I've done some things for a couple architects and some of those projects have been really just really cool to be a part of. And you did that Frank Lloyd Wright house. Yeah, yeah, we did. Yeah, we did the Frank Lloyd Wright house a couple different times. What was that? Already two years ago, maybe? That was, yeah. At least? Yeah. Yeah, so that's what I mean. I've been in a lot of really neat places, you know, castle like houses and just some really cool renovations and you know, you make like the HGTV joke is like, wow, you know, you showed me a picture when we got here and then this is what we walked into and so yeah, just a lot of really neat things. It's a way to freeze time and that's what I've always gotten a kick out of. That's a cool way to think of it. Yeah, yeah. It's a middle of a moment in time that you can freeze in any given second half to the fact that's already gone. So you know, if you don't take the picture, you can't recreate it. And even if someone says, well, you could, no, you really can't because the true emotions already gone because the, you know, the moment's gone. Yeah. So, you know, it's important. Little philosophical. Yeah. It's not really deep, man. Oh, man. I was in the car for an hour and a half and traveling, man. No. Yeah. So, but yeah, I just have fun, you know, and I make the joke now that I'm like an HR nightmare. So I have to kind of be my own boss because I would probably get in trouble left and right and, you know, and I get to dress like a 12 year old and, you know, not shave and come across semi homeless, but I'm not and, you know, meet with tons of different people and help, you know, out, whether it's a house or a family session or a wedding. It's just, it's been a fun, fun adventure. Yeah. It's been, it's been great getting to know you. And if anybody is interested in some high quality photography, just click below. We're going to have the link in all of Mike's information. It can't be yours.