Central Mississippi Wedding and Portrait Photography

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

Over the years, Brian and I have experienced almost all aspects of dual income earnings – whether it be both of us working full-time jobs and running the business, one working full-time while the other worked part-time at one job and part-time at the business, or in our most current format, working part-time at both a day job and the Studio while the other works full-time at the Studio.  Regardless of the scenario, it takes a lot of juice to work and raise a family, no matter what the dynamic!

The role of the working mom is often very vague.  It is a workout juggling motherhood and a career, but somehow we all make it!

With the birth of our last child, I stepped into the role of what I term the Stay-at-Work-Mom.  With the help of our assistant and some skillful shoot scheduling, I have been able to bring my little one, now four-and-a-half months old, to work with me – full time and it’s a blast!

So, if you are in for a shoot and you hear giggles from the back – that’s just our little guy laughing it up!

Ain’t Life Grand?!

Hollie

We couldn’t get a lick of anything done around here without our faithful assistant, Alyson.   She watches our sweet brood by night and us by day – .

Her talents are not limited to helping the Hulls.  She is a Biology major with a minor in Sculpture at Mississippi College. She is also a budding musician.  She is an excellent guitarist and vocalist.  You can check out her talents at www.myspace.com/alysonadcox

Needless to say, our sweet Alyson is a very talented young lady and we are very thankful to have her here at Hull Portraits Studio!

Brian has been a budding photographer since he was a child.  It has always amazed me that he has known all of his life what he wanted to do for a living and sucessfully made that dream a reality.  I’ve always been a fan of art and all things related, but never thought that there was a practical side to being an artist.  Boy, was I wrong.

Through marriage, we not only created a darn good marital partnership, we created one heck of a good business pairing as well.  We are both creative people, so that helps keep things new and fresh in our work (and lives). I can’t lie, we were worried at first. It’s not a secret that many creatives find it challenging to feed the creative side of their work in conjunction with keeping up with the monotonous side of running a business.

What we have found is that running our own business is far from monotonous…it’s just fun from start to finish!

We’ve been fortunate enough to have some incredible mentors in both art and business. Brian received a BFA from Delta State in Photography and had the good fortune of being taught by some of the South’s best Artists and Art Educators.   I have a BS from Millsaps in Comparative Religion – great school – I most certainly would have double majored with a BA had I known I’d own a business in my future!   I was raised in a family owned restaurant and had the honor of working with my mother and father for over twenty years. After that, I went to work for one of the areas leading restaurant management groups and learned a heck of a lot of things, the most important of which was humility – .

When we first started out we were doing location shooting only. We have now graduated to our second studio and we are loving it!

We’ve come a long way since we began the pursuit of our business dream. We are thankful for all of the people that have supported us along the way (the most important being the three little kiddos we’ve brought into the world since we started this!) We have incredible family, friends, church and clients and we couldn’t be more thankful for you all!

Due to an unfortunate flooding of our old studio (yes, there is video to come), we were forced to move to our new location a little sooner than planned. It was a wild two weeks of cleaning, unpacking, painting, cleaning, arranging, and more cleaning… We officially opened on Febuary 1st. Below is a gallery of some of the wonderful people that have made an appearance in our new studio at 1139 Old Fannin Road in our sweet Suite K.