We started out business with a borrowed camera and a drive to be really good at what we did. From that dream we worked together to capture beautiful images for families, seniors, businesses, & weddings.
We awoke in the middle of the night to flames, looking back on the event & knowing what we know from a fire we had 6 years before that started at a neighboring townhome, we almost didn’t make it out that night. Our special needs son got lost as we all crawled as family out the front door. Once we got him out & the fire was put out we realized all we owned were the cloths on out backs.
We photographed our scheduled clients with rented & borrowed gear as to live up to our obligations never realizing that we were not meeting our obligations to our own mental health after such a tragic event. With insurance for our camera equipment but no renters insurance for our life we pushed forward out of homelessness to provide for our 3 children. A week after the fire we found out we were unexpectedly pregnant. Our beautiful little surprise was going to a girl and she was going to be 10 years younger than her youngest brother.
Most of our clients were amazing through everything, we had developed relationships that stand to this day. Some people wanted what they wanted & wanted it now. That wasn’t those clients fault, it was our fault for putting our business before our own mental health & not setting appropriate honest boundaries. A hard pregnancy, doctor ordered bed rest, 3 children (1 with autism & one with ADHD), & a lot of undiagnosed PTSD led shortfalls, long edit times, juggling more than we should, & after the birth of our daughter went smoothly we were ready to finish out what photography we had on the schedule before closing down. A stubborn sinus infection led our family doctor to order a CT that found a large mass & while thankfully we found out a time later it wasn’t cancer. What it turned out to be was a non-cancerous mass that grew & expanded, even destroying bone. Even to this day 4 years later, there has been 13 surgeries in those 3 years to remove it as it continues to come back time after time.
A closed business, a deterioration of mental health that resulted in inpatient stays to get help with healthy coping mechanisms, a beautiful baby girl who put the entire world in perspective, & eventually Covid 19 all changed our lives.
No client of Hibben Photography ever had photos taken & didn’t receive photos barring two instances of a drive that failed but both of those client did receive over 85% of the images that we were able to rescue. Weddings we were not able to attend were covered by other photographers & those photographers delivered images on par with our quality.
We apologize for letting anyone down who feels like they were let down by us or the situation we were in at the end of our business. We want to say thank you to the thousands of happy clients we served over the years.
