The Return of Willow
What happened and where we are today:
If you’ve been with us for a while, you know that last December we stepped away from Willow Photo Co. and returned to the name I started with: Ryan DeVoll Photography.
I know as we step back into the Willow brand there will rightfully be a lot of confustion. I want to tell you the real story of why we made that decision, and why we’re bringing Willow back today.
First: There wasn’t a lawsuit. No one came after the name. There was no dramatic legal problem behind the scenes. The reason was much more ordinary, and a lot harder for me to admit: I was scared about the future, and I panicked.
For years, we averaged somewhere around 25 to 35 weddings a year. Then, going into the 2026 season, we looked at our calendar in December 2025 and had just six weddings booked.
Six.
That number hit me hard. We had a household to support and a team of talented people whose work I value deeply. With so few weddings on the books, I worried that we wouldn’t bring in enough to keep our home afloat through the season, let alone pay our associates what I believe they deserve. I started questioning everything: our brand, our website, our social media, our pricing, our collections, our process, our workflow, and the team we had worked so hard to build.
This came after one of our hardest years as a family, and a team. Between my youngest daughter being born 4 months earlier than expected, and our team going through major changes behind the scenes, I began to wonder if Willow was part of the problem. Maybe the name was confusing people. Maybe the business had grown too far from its roots. Maybe putting my own name back on the business would make it simpler, clearer, easier to understand.
So we changed it.
At the time, I told myself it was a business decision. And some of it was. But the honest truth is that fear was driving more of that decision than clarity was. I was looking at a frighteningly quiet calendar and trying to find something I could change. I changed the name because it was something I could control.
I thought returning to Ryan DeVoll Photography might help us reset. But changing the name didn’t solve the bigger problem I was reacting to. The wedding industry was having a difficult season, and we were feeling it. Many of the people around us were feeling it too. I took a tough stretch in the market and made it mean that something about our business, our brand, or even me had to be wrong.
I won’t pretend that decision felt right from the start. I wasn’t completely sure it was the right move when we made it.
And as time passed, I found myself missing Willow more than I expected.
Willow was never just a different name for the same photography business. We built it with a future in mind: for our kids, for our family, and for the kind of life we hoped this work could make possible. We wanted to create something that could grow beyond me, something with room for other people’s talent and ideas, something that could become its own lasting part of our family’s story.
One of the things I loved most about Willow was building and running a team of truly creative people. I loved seeing what happened when talented people brought their own perspective and care to the work. I loved the sense that we were making something together. I’m proud of what our team gave to our clients, and I’m proud of the business we built around them.
When I went back to Ryan DeVoll Photography, I thought I was making things clearer. Instead, I realized that I had stepped away from a name and a way of working that represented who we had become. Ryan DeVoll Photography is where this began. That name will always be part of the story. But Willow is the brand we built for the team, the family, and the future we were trying to create.
And now, the picture looks different. 2027 is already shaping up to be a strong year. Couples are reaching out, bookings are coming in, and I feel more hopeful about what lies ahead. I’m grateful for that momentum, but I also don’t want to suggest that a fuller calendar is the only reason Willow is coming back. The hard season forced me to look closely at what I was building and what I wanted to keep building. It also made me realize that changing the name out of fear didn’t make me want Willow any less.
So Willow Photo Co. is back.
This isn’t me claiming that the name change never happened or pretending I had some perfect plan all along. I made a decision from a place of real financial fear. I hoped it would help. I learned that a name change couldn’t carry the weight of every worry I had about the business. And I missed the brand, the team, and the future we had imagined when we created Willow.
We’re returning to Willow with more experience and a clearer sense of what it means to us. We’re not trying to rewind to an earlier chapter. We’re bringing the name back because it feels honest to the people and the work behind it, and because I want to keep building the future I imagined when Willow began.
Thank you to everyone who stayed with us through the name change and this next turn in the story. I know it may have looked uncertain from the outside, because it felt uncertain from the inside too. I’m deeply grateful that you’re still here.
Willow Photo Co. is back. And I’m excited to see where we take it next.
With love,