They Grow Up SO Fast!

October 3, 2019

How many times have you heard the phrase “They grow up SO fast"!!!”?

Probably so often that it’s a bit of a cliche. But the thing about cliches is that they’re usually very, very true!

Case in point - earlier this year, we were contacted by a new mother to take photos of her baby boy. There was no reference to our past dealings, no “you might remember me”…nothing specific to remind us that we’ve met before. But her name name sounded so familiar…

A quick search of our client records confirmed that we indeed had photographed her before! We had, in fact, taken Kiera’s First Communion portraits in early 2005 when we were on Mill Street, as well as her brother’s Communion photos a bit later…and now she was bringing her child to us for photos.

Talk about making one feel old!

When mom and dad brought in baby MJ for his photos, we were immediately struck by his eyes…it was like we had seen them before! Kiera, her brother Maxwell and MJ all have the same big, mischievous “smiling” eyes. When we did Kiera’s photos for her communion, I forced Max to have his photo taken, too, even though his mom Antonia wasn’t planning on it. He wasn’t dressed for photos, but I didn’t care about that - I wanted to do a close up of that face!

We will always owe Antonia a huge debt of gratitude for helping to propel our business forward. See, just around the time when we did Kiera’s communion portraits, we had decided that it was time to leave our Mill Street location. Every client we had was told - if you don’t see our sign here, we’re not out of business…we’ve moved! We knew it was a situation that would involve a quick reaction…because there was NOTHING available in terms of a storefront!

So when she walked into our door one day and said it looked like the flower shop at 124 Main Street was preparing to close, we jumped into action! We closed our store, walked over and asked what was happening. They kindly let us wander around and gave us the number to the landlords…who were very shocked to hear that someone knew what was happening, as it was literally just told to them. We met, negotiated our rent on the driveway…and prepared to move…

Isn’t that the way things work in Georgetown? It’s not what you know…it’s who you know!

Here’s some more photos from both sessions, from 2005 and 2019…proving that they do, indeed, grow up so fast!!!

Replicating Photos Taken Many Years Previously...or trying to!

September 23, 2019

You’ve seen the photos where siblings - many years later - get together and try to replicate photos from their youth? Where they try to match the outfits, the decor, the posing…all with hilarious results due to the fact that they’re all much bigger now, the decor is outdated, and polyester is no longer an option when it comes to clothing?

Well…this isn’t quite like that!

Last fall, we got the opportunity to photograph Caroline’s crew again; the first time was 14 years previously, almost to the day. It’s always amazing to see somebody that you first had in front of your camera a long time ago, back in front of it again! Except for the fact that it makes one feel old, it is one of the intangible benefits of the job - and the process we’ve undertaken lately of looking back after #15years of our business has given us so many examples of people that we’ve seen grow up that we’ll be sharing a few of them in the coming weeks…but back to this family!

In the process of photographing all large family groupings, we always do a bunch of combinations of people - and especially when dealing with multiple generations. We had the whole family positioned in a field and did a bunch of these combinations, breaking it down to the point where we got to just the kids set up. One of them said “Let’s do that picture from when we were kids!”, so they all sat down and tried to recreate the shot - who was on what side, where the hands were and whose expression was what - was all earnestly discussed for quite some time between them.

Mom jumped in there, too, and started positioning them!!! No one could quite agree on what was right…

And I was no help at all! I really wasn’t sure what was going on while it was happening, and I couldn’t remember the photo in question, even though I took it! But we just kept taking pictures. It wasn’t until after we got back from the session and saw the original that it all came flooding back.

Thankfully, the 2018 version did not include tears like the 2004 one did!

Here’s some of the other shots we did from both sessions. Enjoy!

One of our best photos...period.

September 19, 2019

When we started thinking about the 15th anniversary of locps, and some of the images we created in the past…one of the first photographs to come to mind is this one….

Taken in December of 2004, Amy captured this moment in our Mill Street studio…and we’ve been haunted by those eyes ever since! In the single click of a shutter, an image that conveys so much emotion and so much feeling is really hard to put into words, even after so much time passing.

Liz had a footwear store around the corner from us, and came into our shop one day nervously with a request - could we capture the intimacy of her breastfeeding her little one? Of course we said yes!

The date was set, and I took the afternoon off. In order to help ease into the session, Amy took a bunch of photos working up to the feeding photos, and this is one of them. At three months old, Paige was not able to sit up on her own - most babies do so at six months - so mom lovingly held her for a bunch of them.

We used this photo as a sample everywhere. It was on a bunch of print ads and on our original website. We used it as our Gift Certificate image forever, it was the cover of a United Way brochure we designed, and it was prominent on the banners we had displayed on the outside of our second location on Main Street. In fact, Liz told us that when Paige was older, they would drive by and she would exclaim “There’s the Photo House!” when she saw herself.

Amy also captured the breastfeeding shots, but only a few. The session was cut short when, while naked and feeding, Paige had a bit of a bowel movement! It went everywhere!!! Poor Liz wasn’t sure what to do, holding a a baby without a shirt on and baby poop all over her. And neither did Amy - do you keep taking photos at that point, or do you start the clean up?

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