A little bit more about me
I first got into photography as a senior in high school since senior photos were too expensive!! I got senior photos from a local portrait studio in the mall because I couldn’t afford what I thought was quite a ridiculous sittings fee at time (I’ve now come to learn that photographers eat too) but also that the photos produced in the mall were not even half as good as the ones someone else invested in.
When I started out , I used a webcam and point and shoot camera to shoot friends and family and did A LOT of editing in Photoshop! So I can HONESTLY say… its’ not what you shoot with, if you have an eye for something – you can still capture it with a point and shoot! The quality and options of how you can shoot it changes with a good camera.
But seriously, not everyone can afford the high-tech equipment professionals use – otherwise, I’d be out of a job. 
I don’t mind the little guy who’s still on their way to greatness like myself at one point but don’t trust just anyone to take your photos – they gotta be someone passionate enough to figure out that “P” on the camera does not stand for ‘professional.’
My parents were those kinds of people who moved around to be near family as well as finding jobs so I’ve lived all over growing up. They finally decided to stay in Broomfield, Colorado longer than their normal under 5 year periods - where I finished off high school and my college career at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I studied International Affairs and Political Science with a concentration in French.
After I graduated from the CU, my husband and I relocated to Missoula, MT where his entire family lives. I fiddled around with a couple of dead end jobs and looked for several opportunities in my field of studies with no luck. In all desparation to find a career in the small town of Missoula, I stumbbled upon a job opening for a graphic designer at the Missoulian News Paper and thought to myself – “why not?”
At the time, I had no schooling or formal training for the position but had several years of hands on experience from designing for student associations and non-profits that I belonged to.
With a big portfolio of hands on work, one weekend of InDesign manual studying, and strong references – I landed an entry level graphic design job. During this time, I started opening up all kinds of creative boxes in my head that I had forgotten that I had; pulled together some resources and got a nice camera and started shooting anything and everything in front of me.
After a couple of promotions in my graphic design job, the work load was just too much as my photography passion started to turn into more and more of a job than a hobby. I was awarded Missoula’s Choice Photographer in 2010 and realized that I had to focus on my photography if I wanted to do anything with it and opened up a studio in Downtown Missoula where I am currently situated.
My business was formerly called Nkauj Ntsuab Designs & Photography (nn-dp) because my real name that was given to me at birth is Nkauj Ntsuab. Nkauj Ntsuab (phonetically it sounds like goh-joo -uh) comes from the Hmong language. Nkauj by itself stands for “girl” and Ntsuab literally translated means “green” but when combined, Nkauj Ntsuab means: (adjective) beauty divine, having beauty, heavenly, celestial – (pronoun) a woman who has beauty, or a goddess. Or what I like to think of as “the fairest of them all.”
It was just such a beautiful name to call my business but no one could pronounce it. Even my little sister said it was hard for her to recommend my business to people because she forgot how to spell it. So after much debate, I finally decided to change it to Youa Photography because that’s how ntsuab was phonetically understood to be spelled when my parents told the immigration people at the beginning of time when we came to the US.
For more information on the Hmong people, just google, if you want my knowledge on it, then let’s do coffee.
