Central Mississippi Wedding and Portrait Photography

A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.  ~Tenneva Jordan

When I was a little girl my favorite way to call my mom was to spell out her name over and over again….m…o…m…o…m…o…m…o…m…o…and so on and so on.  I thought it rather ingenious…she, however, thought it to be…quite annoying (in an endearing “why can’t she just call me something a bit shorter, like, um, mom” kind of way).  My mother was and always has been the best mom I could have ever hoped for.  She’s both rational and eccentric, scholarly and artistic, opinionated and relatively non-political, thinks talking religion at the dinner table is bad manners, and is a darn good friend to all.  I’d like to think that she rubbed off on me a tiny bit…

And then I acquired yet another phenom mom via marriage to my honeypie.  My husband’s mom is the cream of the crop of mother-in-laws.  She is one of the strongest, most loving, generous, and humble women I have ever met.

I have a tremendous amount of respect for these two ladies.  Even more now that I am a mom myself.

I would have never been able to weather the storm of new motherhood without their example and I certainly would have never been able to find the joy in life’s daily kidzasters without being reminded by my moms that life is fleeting and our kiddos grow so fast…

And then there is the glorious job I have outside of being a mom…that of a photographer.

I say it all of the time – I have the best job on the planet.  As a proud momma of three sweet kiddos, I’m forever grateful to work with children and their mommies on a daily basis.  In addition to capturing beautiful images of their children I get to develop relationships with all of these incredible mothers.  Every mother I know has a mom story and I find it endlessly fascinating to hear what other moms have experienced and to share my own story with them.  Through this connection grows a bond and through this bond I delve a little bit deeper into creating something priceless.

For all of you moms out there…I tip my hat to you.

For all of you dads out there…you’ve got something really, really special in your wife and mom.  The next time you think about it, ask them about their mom story.  They might just blow your mind.

xoxo

H

Greeting to all of you out there in hyper-global superweb land!

I thought it would be nice to share a glimpse into our studio – a sneak peek into how one little studio is set-up.

Our studio is a store-front in a small retail strip in Brandon, Mississippi.  We decided on this spot because it has lots of foot traffic and even more visibility in a well populated suburban setting.  We love it – it really is our little home away from home.

Like many storefront studios we have examples of our work in our front windows.  We had one of our friends construct a faux wall to help separate the front area from our shooting space.  It has given us additional wall space for portrait examples and added extra darkening benefits to the studio.  We put a couple of chairs and a lamp there so that our clients (mainly their parents and grandparents) have a place to sit while we are shooting.    We have enough wall space up front to feature many different styles of printed work from traditional framed prints to gallery wrapped canvas, to more contemporary acrylic prints and metal wall hangings.  It has worked out beautifully.

We try to keep everything in our studio very functional.  All of our equipment is on rollers so that we can move it from wall to wall.  We put up several different colors of venetian plaster on one side of the studio to offer us formal background versatility with texture.  We also have a background track on that wall so that we can sweep different backgrounds in and out – giving us several different background options in one place.  We dropped a high-key on another section of our wall space for shots on white.

On the wall opposite our textured wall is devoted to several paper, wood, and metal backgrounds to help us keep a variety.

We have been fortunate enough to be able to design a “baby corner” directly into our layout.  We have a little nook towards the front of the studio completely dedicated to newborn to baby’s first year photography.

We strive to keep functional props so that our workspace isn’t cluttered.  We use chairs, benches, and blocks for everything from everyday work, to shoots, to things we can stand on to get the right shot.  It is so much fun trying to figure out just how functional a prop can be!

Since our studio is shot-gun style – we have a partition wall between the back of the studio and our office space and viewing area.  We use shimmery curtains to separate our office from the viewing area (helps maximize space and offers a homey feel to our clients).

We keep our packaging area nice and neat and store packaged items in our storefront window so that on-lookers can get a little glimpse of our style.  We coupled functional with fun in our packaging.  We use corrugated cardboard to wrap around our prints and label them by using one of our signature Hull Portraits Studio cards punched with the client’s name tied with a pretty little grossgrain brown bow.

The most wonderful thing about our space is the ability to switch from baby portraits to  family portraits to  senior portraits or bridal portrait shoot quickly. We love this place.

Hollie

So, without a doubt, their is far less supreme than getting your kiddos to cuddle up for a kiss, let alone actually get that kiss on camera.  As parents of three dueling kiddos, we know all about how challenging it is to garner a shot of our spunkie lil’ ones puckering up for a shot.  In fact, we are so thankful for one shot of our oldest two hugging that we proudly display it in the front window of our studio (we refer to it as “the only time they hugged in their first three years of life”).
What we have found is that it takes far more than the talents of your photography team and parents….it takes some darn cooperative kiddos!

Usually it takes a series of attempts to land the shot and many times it isn’t always what you have in your minds eye, however, it’s worth a frame when you can actually achieve a believable kiss on camera.

Kids aren’t always opposed to the idea of kissing a sibling.  It is usually pretty simple to get them to do it – especially if the younger is a baby.  However, in order to get a shot with both faces, you have to come up with a helpful strategy for the older sibling…..

Naturally, kids want to kiss on the lips or the cheek.  Sounds legit, except for the fact that both the lips AND the cheeks usually end up blocking at least one of the kids face.  So, we have learned to ask kiddos to kiss their little brothers or sisters on the ear or back of the head…sounds funny, I know, but it works!

Cute and animated – but out of focus!

Nobody’s looking at the camera – ….

Heehee!

Usually we get at least one attempt for the nose!  Love it!

Loved his face in this one, but we fired off before she was ready –

Got it!  Even though neither child is looking at the camera the lighting contrast ended up looking really nice in the final color and black and white version of this one.

We love Senior season.

There is something so transformative about it.

We get the opportunity to capture kids, *ahem*, young adults just as they are reaching the final stage of their childhood – just moments in time before they spring forth into the second phase of life.  It is a time in which you can see how their life experiences have molded them, but you can also recognize that they are unconscious to how those experiences will affect the rest of their lives.  It’s really very beautiful to see.

This week we were very fortunate to meet two incredible young Seniors from our area – Nicole and Bridget.

Nicole and her mom came in for her shoot.  We decided to start in studio and work our way outdoors.

We wanted to fiddle around with a new backdrop we just painted.  We were really happy with the results.

It’s important when working with Seniors to be sure to get a variety of different vantage points, so we worked around the studio using different walls and chairs.  I loved the idea of having her lean back on our “red wall”, which happens to really be terra cotta – .   Love the way her shirt adds to the photo – her style + a little traditional background and lighting = nice shot.

Most of the time we don’t break out the black backdrop on Seniors, but Nicole had stunning bright eyes and long, dark hair, so we thought that we might be able to get something nice if we worked a little lighting into the shoot and we ended up getting a couple of really nice shots.  Loved this one -

We journeyed to downtown Jackson for her outdoor shots.  We love shooting downtown because there are so many shooting spots to offer.  We settled on one and were able to get a couple of cool shots.

All in all, we had a fantastic time spending the afternoon with Nicole and her mom – all smiles and fun to work with!

Later in the week, Bridget and her dad joined us in the morning to do her shoot.  Due to the time of day we started our shoot outdoors.  We headed back downtown and chose one of the city’s historical districts for the shoot.

As soon as we got out of the car, we found BLUE walls everywhere – yay!

We started out with the more traditional – had to get a close up of that smile!

Bridget was so cute.  She told us that she wasn’t very good at serious poses because she was much more of a “smiler” than a serious person.  She pulled this one off – good job, kiddo!

Her dad and I struck gold when we passed this building.  Kudzu was growing all of the way back.  Very cool.  Memorable shot.

On our way back to the studio we decided to give the new Convention Center a shot.  It had tons of paneled slate everywhere, so we had to go for it.

Now, we love some props, and this young lady brought one we just had to work with – a bulky straw hat.  Loved it.  Too cute.

We had such a great time with these Seniors.  Both were happy and upbeat and a pure joy to work with.

Can’t wait to see more 2011 Seniors!

I stumbled across this when I was culling photos for a proofing yesterday.  It made me smile.

This is our every day.

We have the honor of capturing smiles for a living – from newborn babes to great-great grandparents.

It’s what we do.

And we love every second of it.