Evelhair Photography

My name is Jenna Evelhair, the owner/founder of Evelhair Photography.

When it comes to photography, I have been all over the board. I feel it’s important to note that growing up, I used to set my barbies up and take pictures of them with my disposable cameras. I also loved documenting EVERYTHING… from candid photographs on vacation all the way to the kitchen and bathroom of the cabin we were renting (sorry for wasting that film, ma!). Fast track to high school, I took film classes and even made my own pinhole camera once. After my quick trip to college for Fashion Marketing, I started at a state university for photography, taking a film class, but soon found out my brain couldn’t handle going to college for something so subjective. While I knew I didn’t want to go to college for photography, that didn’t diminish my desire to have a camera in my hand. With help from a good friend, Justin Hamel, I bought my first DSLR and began exploring abandoned buildings, thankfully never getting caught.

From there, I managed a lot of seniors at my full time job and got asked to take senior portraits for a few of them. This began a slow trickle into what I swore to myself and everyone else would never become my career, a professional photographer. Much like my first business, I was being approached by family and friends to take portraits. In 2013, a friend who focused on wedding photography moved back to the area and needed a second shooter. Throughout my time as a wedding photographer, I gained a lot of portrait clients and began photographing my handmade goods for my other business.

Ironically, when I moved to Colorado (2019), I took a bit of a hiatus from photography for about a year, to the extent that I sold a majority of my equipment to help pay for rent within my first few months out west. I was overwhelmed with my handmade business taking off, building new relationships and was working for a small business in town as well.

I lost my day job at the end of 2019 and chose to take that as a sign. As I mentally prepared myself for full time self employment, I had no idea what I was up against. Breweries made up a significant amount of my wholesale accounts for my handmade business, all of which were being shut down. I made the decision to pivot and utilize one of my biggest skills… adaptability! With big thanks to my step brother, Jason, I quickly learned about a freelance site online and began offering product photography; after all, I had been doing all my product photography for my handmade apparel company. Fun fact, I had little knowledge about product photography. I remember building this obnoxious light-box out of a cardboard box as if I was entering a science fair in elementary school before realizing how inexpensive a lightbox is.

With the help of my best friend, and now part time assistant, Arielle, I was able to tackle jobs that were above my skill level while I learned a majority of my basic product editing skills from her in the early months. What began as a move of necessity became an overwhelming success.