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