Inside the Mind of Kayla Scarberry

"Someone once said Kayla's energy is like a warm hug", a LangLab patron reflected as they sat and admired the gallery of photos. January 30th, 2026 marked the one year anniversary of the Lens Lounge photography studio and creative space. Lining the walls were a beautiful display of the studio's already wide portfolio in just one year. It was a busy year indeed, for Kayla Scarberry and Weeping Willow Photography.

Nestled on the second floor of the LangLab in South Bend, the Lens Lounge is meticulously curated to fulfill Kayla's vision, and easily adaptable to bring to life anyone else's. As a photographer for 21 years, a proud wife, and mother of three, being a businesswoman has become the ideal balanced way of life for her.

"I would not be the parent I am without running a business", Kayla said, listing off her activities as PTO president like making sure popcorn and PJ day at her children's school goes off without a hitch. "And my kids get to sometimes go to my business and be part of it too. So I get to actually show them how to be a badass worker and work for your money and not be capped at your working abilities."

On the day before the one year anniversary of her studio and rental space, we sat down at the Lens Lounge to step Inside the Mind behind it all.

"With 21 years of experience behind the camera, I bring confidence, calm, and creativity to every session — no matter the situation." - Kayla Scarberry

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SOURCE: What is your very first creative memory?

Kayla: My aha kind of moment of I want to do this for the rest of my life was when I was a senior in high school. My aunt's a professional photographer in Indianapolis and she did my senior photos and I'm like, that's all I want to do. That session I had a great experience and I loved being part of that, I was going to school for photography and I went to lots of places to photograph. I went to this abandoned building and did self-portraits of myself within this space and I feel like that was probably another kind of aha, like I can get really creative and I just have me and my camera, nothing else.

SOURCE: What was it like growing up in Knox, Indiana?

Kayla: Well it's a small farming town. I kind of found my art friends in school, so that kind of helped me get into the whole creative field I feel like. I have a lot of friends that are musicians, I have friends that are in bands, I did marching band and color guard. I tried to stick with kind of the art field whenever I was in there just because I really gravitated towards that. But having a group of friends that are into the arts really helped. My friend Zac that actually helps out with the Lens Lounge, I've been friends with him since middle school and he's from Knox too.

SOURCE: Before photography what other creative outlets did you have?

Kayla: I was in marching band color guard, cheerleading, yearbook, that was another kind of creative field. I worked at Taco Bell in high school but like everyone else that worked at Taco Bell were artists so that was kind of a fun experience [laughs]. I would say Knox does have a really good art department for being a smaller school. They have a photography class, they have a graphic design class, they have their own darkroom. That was my first experience with a darkroom and I'm like, I love this. I want to keep on going and I loved going into darkrooms when I went to ISU. When I went to Ivy Tech I took darkroom classes and someday I would love to open up my own darkroom, but we'll see what the future brings.

SOURCE: I know you said you bounced around many colleges, what was the school experience like for you?

Kayla: I definitely learned a lot about myself throughout college. I highly suggest anyone going to college to try to stick to one college, not follow your friends, because that's pretty much what I was doing. I went to ISU for one year and then all of my friends moved away from ISU. I'm like, I don't want to be here without friends. So I went home for a year and then went to Ivy Tech in South Bend. And I'm like I need to get out of Knox because I was living there but going to school in South Bend.

And so I decided to go to Ball State because I had some friends that were going there. I love Ball State, but I just wanted to finish college. I went to Ivy Tech in Indianapolis after that and just got my degree. I was trying to minor into dance just because I loved teaching color guard, which I taught up until my second child, but I knew that it was a lot of weekends and I didn't get paid that great so I decided to kind of cut that and just pursue photography.

SOURCE: Do you feel that your school experience set you up with the skills that you needed to be a photographer? Or how much of that was on-the-job training?

Kayla: Well, I'm a very hands-on learning kind of person, I would say I learned a lot in college but I learned probably more of the details of running a business and what it is to be a photographer and making money off of it more hands-on. Ivy Tech, I feel like, did a great job with hands-on kind of stuff. The universities were more like in the book kind of a thing, the classes that I've taken, anyways. I took different lighting classes at Ivy Tech in Indianapolis and I'm like, I love this. And their graphic design department was really awesome too and I loved just learning hands-on with that.

SOURCE: Tell us about Weeping Willow Photography?

Kayla: Weeping Willow Photography is a business that photographs weddings, families, babies; they're my favorite thing to photograph. I love photographing the happiest parts of people's lives and I feel like I'm really great with kids. When I do weddings if you involve kids as like a flower girl or whatever I will be hamming them up. [laughs] Weeping Willow Photography has been open for 11 years now, and I've been photographing for 21 years.

"Nature is a huge part of my life. I grew up in the country and weeping willow trees I always found beautiful passing by with their dangling leaves and their branches and just the feel of it. That's pretty much how I came up with the name Weeping Willow Photography. I want to show beauty in everyone's lives, and why not with Weeping Willow?" - on the significance of 'Weeping Willow'

SOURCE: What are the advantages and drawbacks of shooting digital versus film?

Kayla: It's kind of nice 'cause I've been photographing for 21 years so I actually started with film. All high school and the first couple years of college I just pretty much shot film. There's a huge learning curve, I guess, with digital just because you can trial and error digital all the time because it's like an endless pit, you can just keep on photographing. But with film, you only have that roll of film, and if you use it you're gonna have to buy another roll of film. So it's a little more expensive to do that trial and error.

College actually helped me learn the insights to the camera, I feel like I have that advantage point of just learning all that kind of information and learning with film. I feel like I can shoot anywhere and still create a beautiful photo with knowing the insides and outs of a camera. And it's always changing and nicer cameras are coming out, and you can crank up that ISO like crazy and still get beautiful photos. It's nice knowing both. I don't ever do film anymore. I would love to, I just don't get the time to do that with having a family and all that.

SOURCE: Explain to a novice like me just how important lighting is?

Kayla: Lighting is everything; the quality of light, how bright it's coming in, I shoot everything in manual. I know exactly what camera settings I will need to have when I'm photographing indoors or when I'm photographing outside on a sunny day, or if I'm photographing an event at LangLab and it's so dark.

Knowing lighting and where it's hitting on your subject is important. I photograph mainly people so I'll have to know, "what's the most flattering lighting on a person?" Most of the time lighting coming from below will create more scary images. Something more higher up and off to the side will create more flattering images, or having diffusers on with your lighting. On a nice cloudy day like today, especially during the winter time, the snow reflects nice soft lighting. Cloudy days are fun for photographers because it already creates that diffuse lighting. Those are probably the best lighting scenarios for a photographer.

Sunny days are a little bit more difficult. I feel like a lot of newer photographers struggle on midday sunny days. That's probably the hardest, or completely dark like if it's midnight. You kind of have to learn how to play around with it. When you're photographing people on sunny days never having the subject actually looking at the camera is a pro tip. Having the person look up and close their eyes, just because the lighting is already up there and you want the light to like fall off their face and not have like dark lines under their eyes and all that kind of stuff. So there's a lot into lighting and I can talk about it all day, especially with different types of photography too and what you're trying to achieve.

SOURCE: What is your personal favorite camera?

Kayla: I switched over from a DSLR to a mirrorless camera. I had a Canon 5D Mark IV. I had two of those, I sold one of those and I upgraded to a mirrorless, which is an R6 Mark II.

So mirrorless, I completely love it. It's better in darker situations, which I photograph in a lot of dark situations, photographing weddings and then events. There's a lot of dark situations that it's easy to bring up the ISO and you won't get tons of grain. Lightroom helps with grain right now, but I would say that would be my favorite camera just because I use it all the time.

Lenses is a whole 'nother thing. I primarily use two different lenses and I always have two cameras, two lenses on me at all times when I'm photographing studio work, weddings, events; it's just nice to have my telephoto and then a wider kind of lens. I don't shoot prime at the moment, prime lenses are where you can't focus or zoom in and out kind of a thing. I have a 70-200mm for my telephoto and then a wider one for my wide lens, but it can zoom in and out for both of those. But prime lenses are beautiful, 50 is what I started with for 10 years and it never left my camera. I loved it and used it until it fell apart. [laughs]

SOURCE: What was your very first camera?

Kayla: It's a cute little Rebel T2. It's had better days, there's cobwebs in it, I broke it, the back end doesn't stay on, but this was one of my first cameras. My dad bought it for me when I was going to college, so the darkroom classes and the photography classes I took with this. I had this until it broke, pretty much my whole college career. Usually if you hear Rebel it's like a starting camera and it will come with a kit lens. It's a good starter camera to have

SOURCE: Do you have any influences on your style?

Kayla: I feel like I'm always changing influences, but I would say my longest influence would be Annie Leibovitz. I get to see her in March. I have loved her work since middle school when I actually started somewhat paying attention to fashion. She was the main photographer for Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone and she's doing a whole talk at WPPI (Weddings and Portrait Photographers International) this year and I'm excited that I get to see her. Hopefully I get to meet her in Las Vegas, on my birthday. [laughs]

Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair

SOURCE: What's your personal favorite shoot that you've done?

Kayla: I love almost every single photo shoot that I do, but I would have to say when I went to Scotland because I got to travel. I've known the bride for a long time, she was my best friend's cousin. She hired me for her American wedding. But her husband was from Scotland so after they hired me for their American wedding, they're like, "I think we're gonna do a Scotland wedding too." So I gave them a deal to where if they could fly me out to Scotland to photograph their wedding all they would have to pay was my travel and stay. And they paid for Adam, my husband's travel and stay too. We were there for a full week and got to experience Scotland and it was beautiful. We got to go to the Highlands, there was a whiskey tour, they did that part in the morning for some reason. [Laughs]

"I photograph families, couples, and babies because I know how fast life moves. Photos become memories, and memories become legacy."

SOURCE: What is it like being there for some of the most timeless moments of your clients' lives?

Kayla: I feel very privileged to be part of anyone's lives that they are bringing me into because sometimes it's a very personal experience with them, so I feel really happy that my clients want me to be part of that too and to document that. I sometimes cry during weddings and during newborn sessions, during family sessions with kids. I'm just always having fun with the kids, my clients will definitely tell you that. [laughs] I have kids that call me Miss Kayla and they always get excited to see me every year. I love being part of all those joyous moments.

SOURCE: What are some of the challenges of running your own business?

Kayla: I guess the challenges of running your own business is just trying to do it all. I've learned that you can't do it all, and it's best to outsource certain things that you're not good at. So sometimes I'm great at bookkeeping when I'm slow, but when I become really busy I fall off my bookkeeping. So I hired a bookkeeper, and she asked me like one question once a month and I'm ready to go during tax time. So I don't have that headache. I would suggest if you feel like you're extremely slow at something and someone else will do something better in a faster pace, pay them. I would definitely suggest outsourcing things that you're not good at to run a successful business.

SOURCE: What are some of the most rewarding aspects of running your own business?

Kayla: FREEDOM. I would not be the parent I am without running a business. Everyone at my kids' school knows me, I'm the PTO president there. I was just there this morning checking to see if we have popcorn supplies because once a month we do popcorn day and PJ day. I'm there all the time. My kids love it and they get to sometimes go to my business and be part of it too. So I get to actually show them how to be a badass worker and work for your money and not be capped at your working abilities. You can work as much as you want or not as much as you want. And you can make as much as you want or not make as much as you want. Just having that freedom and having time for my kids all the time is probably the most rewarding.

SOURCE: What is it like having a creative marriage with your husband Action Adam?

Kayla: It's different than a lot of other families. It's nice to have a creative husband on top of my creative business. He helps out a lot with the creative side and keeping me on my toes with keeping it all about the community and I feel like we work really well together with that aspect.

SOURCE: Would you say there's a yin and yang aspect to your marriage where you feed into each other's crafts?

Kayla:  I am definitely the person that thinks about money. I'm more of a type A kind of person and Adam is like the opposite. He loves to make art and create beauty and do all the fun stuff. And so it's nice to have that yin yang experience because I feel like that's a good blend of keeping us on track. I'm sometimes so focused into business and making sure we're making the money that we need to make and everything and he's like, "Don't forget about the community, don't forget about what you're doing your business for."

SOURCE: What was it like photographing Pete Buttigieg's wedding?

Kayla:  So I was the second photographer for Pete Buttigieg's wedding. My friend Peter Ringenberg was the main photographer and I shared a space with Peter for 9-10 years before I moved into LangLab. Peter would probably be my biggest mentor in this community just because he's helped me get to the level that I needed to be after college. And he's the type of person that always has the newest gear and I got to play with all that. Sorry I was going off track with that but the wedding was amazing and actually was the first time I heard about LangLab because the reception was here.  And I'm like, "Where are we going?" Because when you come to LangLab the outside almost looks like an abandoned building, but when you come in it's beautiful.

SOURCE: Going into a wedding, is it stressful making sure everyone is in the right spot to get the shots you need and managing people in real time?

Kayla:  Just having that knowledge of what typically happens during a wedding day, I'll sit down with my couples and we'll have a whole start to finish; like what's going on, what's important to you, what do you want me to photograph? But I have a general list that I like to photograph and I have a prep that I do in the mornings. I have my morning ritual and my night ritual that I do after I leave the wedding because I like to make sure everything's backed up right away. I will not delete photos off of the SD cards until I'm actually done with the project too.

So I'll have it on my external, my SD card, and I'll have it backed up online too. Weddings are a little bit more high stress, but I have a good game plan. I've seen people lose images, I've had couples tell me that they've had friends that photographers have ghosted them, if they go out of business and they just don't reply back or they lose their images and they don't know how to tell the client. I hear a lot of horror stories and I make sure that none of them happen. And I shoot dual cards that are mirroring the whole time, so if an SD card goes bad during a wedding I have another backup on that too.  I am a little OCD on this, but you kind of have to be running a business, especially when weddings happen only once.

SOURCE: Tell us about the Lens Lounge?

Kayla: I've been doing the Lens Lounge for one year now, and I wanted a space that is nice to have when you're starting out. Having a studio just for yourself as a photographer is a huge expense so a lot of photographers don't do that, they'll either rent maybe a day or an hour or they'll just try to stick to outdoors because it's easier. I wanted to open up the Lens Lounge so I can offer this to the photography community because there's a huge one here. But I wanted it to not just be a rental space, I wanted it to be educational too.

That's why I'm starting the workshops, and the subscribers get to be part of a lot of different things that if you're just renting for an hour you don't really get to see. For subscribers I do these creative content shoots once a month that they get to be part of.

So once a month I'll bring a model in, I'm photographing new sets, I'm playing around with lighting that I don't normally do and they get to to experience that. And then I do the photographer meetups on a quarterly basis where it's open to everyone and models.

The workshops I have at a low price because I'm doing it once a month, and I'm asking other photographers to also teach. I am reaching out to other photographers that I know have a great skill and I think would be great for them to share. I'm starting to get a pretty good lineup for my workshops, I'm excited about it.

SOURCE: Tell us about your mentorships?

Kayla: I call it Shoot, Edit, Reflect. I photograph weddings, families, and babies so it's mainly for photographers that are wanting to learn more about that. They get to shadow me during whichever they choose that they're wanting to learn. So they can shadow me at a wedding, they can shadow me at a newborn session and they can shadow me at a family session. And if they have questions at that time I can answer those, and I will also record myself while I'm editing that session or wedding that they shadowed me at and I'll send it to them. Then we'll have coffee at the end and just go over like what have you learned? What do you want to learn next? If they have questions about something they saw that they didn't quite get, I can help them.

SOURCE: What do you look for in a mentee?

Kayla: Really just anyone that is willing to learn. And there's so much to learn, I'm constantly learning. I'm being mentored myself, I have a photographer on the West side that I go to, I do her mastermind and her retreat that I just went to. I feel like not just photographers, but just anyone in life you need to continue to learn. Having a mentor and having that person to kind of guide you is just a great way of learning.

SOURCE: What was the most valuable thing you took from your retreat?

Kayla: As a business owner it's great to do those things not only to learn, but to kind of reset. I feel like everyone, especially in the photography industry, we are known to be working like crazy especially if you're photographing like families. It's extremely busy during the fall season and a lot of people get burnout and going to those type of things kind of save you from that.

SOURCE: What are your keys to preventing burnout?

Kayla: Having a morning routine, going to those retreats or expos, just getting away and out of your life cycle for a moment; okay, reset time. I opened the Lens Lounge, I feel like this has saved me from burnout. Even though I feel like I do a variety with Weeping Willow Photography; weddings, families, and babies, but kind of doing the same thing all the time kind of puts you in almost into a burnout. It's nice to do different things.

So with the Lens Lounge I like to do the creative shoots which I don't normally do.

SOURCE: What is that work-life balance like being a mother?

Kayla: I am actually teaching a class about work-life balance in April, that's one of the workshops. Mainly because a lot of people come to me asking how I do everything, and they see me as doing it all really well. But I'm good at time management, and I know nothing's perfect. I'll sometimes spend more time with my family, I'll sometimes spend more time with my business. Just having that balance and knowing when things are starting to give you a little bit more time.

SOURCE: How beneficial was the SPARK Program?

Kayla:  I probably wouldn't have gone full time with my business without the SPARK program, which is at St. Mary's College. It's an entrepreneurship program for any women wanting to either start a or grow a business. It's always a small class and I feel like it needs to be heard more. It's usually two days a week, you have a different professional in the community that is very knowledgeable about something and you pretty much do your elevator pitch of your business in front of that person and then they teach you their expertise.

There was a banker that came in one day and she taught us the importance of knowing your credit score, and she went over that and how you can improve it. It was only one semester and it was a fairly cheap class to take for how much information you come out with it. At the end of the semester you get a whole business plan put together. You are ready to open up a loan if you need to, or if you know that you need to build your credit a little bit more you know what you need to do to for your business. It gave me the confidence like okay, I can do this. I quit my part-time job a couple weeks after I graduated the program and went full-time with my business.

SOURCE: The one album you can't live without?

Kayla: Adam and I get along really well mainly because we have the same type of taste with music. For some reason we really connect with female artists and indie kind of rock. Purity Ring is what Adam and I have loved together for a long time, Phantogram is another one that we really enjoyed and I can just listen to forever.

SOURCE: The one film you can't live without?

Kayla: Any of the Wes Anderson movies.

*editor's note: great choice

SOURCE: What advice would you give to your younger self, or younger artists out there?

Kayla: To my younger self, I would say of all the different colleges, just stick to that one. It was a really great experience but I feel like there was no reason to float around to different colleges. To any younger person, just learn. You don't have to spend millions of dollars to learn, just keep on learning. Find a mentor, find someone to guide you. And don't think that you know it all, because I have been photographing for 21 years and I don't know it all either.

The Shout outs

Kayla: Shout out to LangLab, because without LangLab there wouldn't be this great of a community. I would definitely say that the art community is great to have in any city, and I feel like South Bend has a really great art community. Adam, obviously, shout out to you because you do everything for me and you keep me sane. [laughs]

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