Jessica Lark was always an artist in one medium or another, accepted to Moore College of Art and Design under a young artist’s scholarship at 16 years old. Her flair for artistry culminated into a project to honor her best friend that passed away at 19 with a body painting series, which she painted herself and photographed. While she had always had a love for the nostalgia and immortality that photographs provided, she had never found her way to it from the artistic perspective until she used it to archive the imagery she created on the female form? And the rest as they say, is herstory. She married young and began her photography career with no training or education in photography, business, or marketing. Her first sessions were done in her basement next to the oil tank on a backdrop made from a canvas drop cloth bought at home depot and hand painted by her and her sister. She shot on the little green square and charged $25 for the first session, $50 for the second, her first boudoir series, shot in her own bedroom as the set. In 2 and 1/2 years she took her operation from her basement and handmade backdrop sittings at $25 each to an $80,000 a year business, with high end weddings of more than $12000, and opened 2 boutique studio locations with a full staff, now offering her signature intimate portrait collections at $1500-3000. With no experience, training or education, a $2000 start up investment and a lot of determination she built her own little photography empire, while simultaneously juggling a toddler and newborn, no advertising budget, and in the middle of a failing economy.
