Business editor Bob Francis spoke with Rachel and Danny Duran about their business.
Forget Me Not Pictures is owned by Rachel and Danny Duran, who have been providing photography services to the area for over 15 years. Their portfolio of photography and video services includes weddings, family portraits, children/senior portraits, and small businesses.
Forget Me Not Pictures
Contact information:
Location: 2726 Lipscomb St. , Fort Worth 76110
Phone: 682-233-0631
Website: forgetmenotpictures.net
Email: booking@forgetmenotpictures.net
Bob Francis: Why don’t we start at the beginning? How did you get into photography?
Rachel Duran: Danny and I were both photographers on our own. He had his own company and I had my own.
Over the years, we developed a friendship. We had this common interest in photography and, fast forward, we are now married and have a son. We combined both of our businesses and we created Forget Me Not Pictures. We got our LLC and incorporated two years ago. Braver Together helped us facilitate that. We worked with their Braver Business Academy that we are part of, and we’re thankful for that.
We’ve grown. My husband was working full time for a photography company, doing school photography. He left that job and we started to focus mainly on our personal business, Forget Me Not Pictures. Starting this year, around March, we really invested in our new website, and we got everything working and did search engine optimization and such. We hired a video marketing team. We created a personalized ad and we started running ads on Meta. We’ve just really noticed a difference in the traction we’ve had. We’ve got a lot more bookings over the past six to eight months.
Everything’s been fast track. We’re keeping up with client emails. We just got an inquiry this morning to do a wedding next March. Like any business, we’re just trying to stay busy.
Francis: How did each one of you get started in photography?
Rachel: I took a photography class in high school at North Crowley. That’s when they still had dark rooms. I fell in love with the processing part of film. That was the first time I ever really used a professional camera. I had borrowed one of my aunt’s old cameras, that’s where I fell in love with photography.
I got my first official camera back in 2011 when I had my daughter, and she was my first real subject. I got really good at it.
My partner at the time was like, “Hey, why don’t you do this for money?”
So I just went to the Woodshed Smokehouse off University Drive and there was a live band playing. I had my camera with me and I took photos of them because I wanted to practice with my new camera. The band approached me afterwards and asked if I wanted to take photos of them for real. I was like, “Sure.” That was actually my first paying gig. They paid me $75. I was like, “Oh, so this is how it works.”
I started out doing local band photography at first, and then I started doing families. And my business grew mostly word of mouth in the beginning. I didn’t have a website. I think I started a Facebook page years down the line. It wasn’t until my husband and I collaborated with Forget Me Not Pictures that we really started to market and try to reach out for more leads.
Danny Duran: I started photography in college. I was just trying to find a job. The only job available at Tarleton State was as campus photographer. I had never really done photography before, but they gave me a camera, sent me out. My first assignment was capturing some Buddhist monks from Tibet who were touring, doing their chants. I just fell in love with it. They sent me to such a unique event. I got to talk to the monks. They sat down with me, taught me how to meditate, and then I watched their show, and it was just such an amazing experience. Then, I got paid for it! So I was hooked ever since then.
That was kind of my first introduction. My first major client that made me love photography was working for Operation Rock the Troops. They were doing Fashion Rocks tours for shows for the troops. I was hired as their photographer and videographer, and that was one of my first major gigs. That introduced me to a bunch of bands, and then those bands started getting married, and they asked me to start doing their weddings.
Then I met somebody from the Dallas Observer at one of those events, and I started working for the Observer and it’s just kind of been snowballing from there.
It’s been a great venture to start this business with my wife. We were freelancing off our own names. And so when we came together, we wanted to create something more. So hopefully, one day we could manage our company and send out other photographers. We want to be not just Danny Duran.com or Rachel Eubanks photography.com, we wanted something more that we could grow. So we chose to make the LLC.
Francis: And you have a studio, right?
Rachel: It’s a coworking space, LaunchBox Collective on the southside. We office out of there and rent the studio.
Francis: Do you do mostly photography or video or both?
Rachel: Photography seems to be our main work, but we do video as well.
Francis: What’s the main part of your business?
Rachel: Weddings are our main business and what we try to focus on. But we also do family sessions, seniors and small businesses.
Francis: How did you get connected with Braver Together?
Rachel: I was working with Score, doing a mentorship at the time, and I came across a link about this group that helps minorities find resources. Being Hispanic, I reached out. Whitnee Boyd was there at the time, and she said, “Can you come to a meeting?” I showed up and was blown away at the community and the closeness and the support.
As soon as I walked in the door, they were doing business classes on balancing your books or something. Then they had an A&M law school teacher there talking about contracts. I just thought it was so cool to get all those people in one place. That was our first introduction to Braver Together and we just kept on going back.
Francis: You also got involved at TCU?
Rachel: Last year, there was this sign-up opportunity to work with the TCU Neeley School of Business. We didn’t really know what it was going to entail. We signed up through Braver Together and we got selected. We showed up and were introduced to a classroom full of business students. We gave our introduction along with five other businesses. The students, after we did our introductions, got to choose which businesses they wanted to work for, and so we got three students for about eight weeks.
They helped us build our first website. They created marketing things, like our first QR code. They did so many neat things for us in the beginning and that was before we had our LLC. That was our first time being selected for this TCU program.
This year, they are doing a first-generation business owners cohort, and they opened it up to us to apply. We just got an email saying that we’ve been chosen to be a part of this new program. This one is 16 weeks long, and it’s the same kind of idea. We’re going to get a group of students who will work closely with us and help us achieve any goals that we have going on at the moment.
Francis: And you’ve worked with Texas A&M law school as well?
Rachel: Danny went to a Braver Together meeting and there was an A&M law professor there. That was during the time when we were trying to establish our LLC, so we needed some guidance. We went on the A&M wait list. That wait list was probably about a year long, so during that time, with Braver Together’s help, we were able to go ahead and form our LLC.
A&M called us a few weeks ago saying, “We’re ready to help you guys.” We told them we already got our LLC. But, we’re actually wanting to start this new nonprofit called Portraits with a Purpose. It’s going to focus on giving K through 12th-grade students of veterans and families free photography to celebrate their milestones. That’s happening right now. Texas A&M Legal Clinic is currently helping us form and get all of our paperwork in order to file our 501(c)3 right now. We just sent out the invitation to invite board members. We invited Dr. (Whitnee) Boyd and Dr. Shawn Lassiter of Braver Together. That’s our current project that we’re working on.
Francis: Any advice for other entrepreneurs out there?
Rachel: I guess my biggest takeaway, especially talking about Braver Together, is being an active part of your community. Through the kind, gracious acts of Braver Together — they sponsored our membership to the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce and others — we have a year membership with the chambers. So every Coffee Connects, every happy hour that we can get to attend, whether it’s both of us or just one of us, we try to. The reason is we meet other business owners. We’ve actually collaborated with some different businesses through meeting them at these events.
I feel like networking and creating a great support system is really important in growing your business because you need friends all over the place that can help you. You need people you can ask questions of, bounce ideas off of. Creating that network of people and being a part of your community is so important.
Bob Francis is business editor for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at bob.francis@fortworthreport.org. News decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
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