Our Services
We offer:
- Portrait photography for children, youth and adults, individuals, and couples.
- Small event photography.
- Wedding photography packages.
- Product and business photography, either at your location or at our studio (for smaller objects).
Our Process
The first step is a contact from you (phone or e-mail are fine) describing what you would like, when, where, etc. Once the basics are settled, for portraits we will often make a second contact for planning. During this contact we ask questions about what you would like to see in your portraits, what is important to you. If you have examples of pictures that you like -- especially pictures of yourself -- they will help us gauge what kind of poses will work best. Feel free to e-mail them to us.
On the day of the shoot we usually show up a little early to set up, especially for non-studio appointments. We prefer to use natural (available or ambient) light, but often supplement it with off-camera flash and reflectors. You are welcome to invite family or friends to watch, and we might even ask them to assist by holding a reflector now and then.
During our session we will take many, many pictures -- often hundreds. A percentage of those will have the posing, lighting, color, expression and other characteristics that make them "keepers." Once we have taken all the pictures you could possibly want during the shoot, we will take the pictures home to cull them. We will probably send or post a few of the best ones within 24 hours.
The next step is post-production, where we perform minor touch-ups, white/color balancing, cropping, convert the photographs to JPEG format, and upload the very best ones to a gallery on this web site. This is usually complete within about three days of the shoot.
We will send you a link to your gallery where you may select your favorite images, and can download them for your own use, or share them with friends and family. You can have them printed at the photo lab of your choosing, or your can order prints directly through us (at very competitive prices). We recommend that you back up your downloaded images.
Our Prices
We try to keep our pricing simple and transparent. In general:
- We charge $120 for the first hour of shooting time, $60 for each hour thereafter.
- We provide approximately 20 finished images (in digital format) per hour. We can provide you with a photo USB upon request.
- You can order prints from us (we go through MPIX) or from any photo lab of your choosing.
When you compare studio prices, be sure to look both at the "sitting" fee and the print fees. If one is low, the other is usually very high. Many have an effective photo unit price of $50 or more per unit, and session fees of $200 or more. Many require that you purchase your print photographs through them, at 10+ times the actual print cost.
We can charge less for prints and still offer top quality not because we do anything special, but because most studios so overprice their prints. For example, most studios effectively charge $12 - $100 for one "unit" of photographs, many in the $50-$60 range. A unit is one 8 x 10, two 5 x 7, four 4 x 5, or eight wallets. However, it only costs the studio about $3 for a unit, depending on the paper and coatings, plus shipping.
If you order print photos from us, they will actually be fulfilled by MPIX and delivered directly to you. We've tried several different photo print labs and have had consistently good results with MPIX. But there are many good print labs these days. If you take the files to another lab for printing, make sure that they don't apply any color correction. All color adjustments have already been applied to your image files; any further changes will actually mess up the color balance on your photos.
Special circumstances like unusual or multiple locations, travel distance, or the need for assistants may affect the cost, but we will communicate these issues clearly in advance. You are free to share, copy and publish the images in print or electronically, and there is no requirement that you go through us to purchase prints, but do we ask that you do not re-sell them. We also ask you to sign an authorization form so that we can use the images for promotional and other purposes (such as using them as examples of work on this web site).
