Posts in Category: Portraits

Stuck at home… revisit your prints

As a follow-up to our “Why Print Your Portraits” blog, I wanted to let you all know that now is a great time to return to the portrait sessions you’ve had with Pixels over the years. Since you cannot receive visitors at your home, why not revisit those days, events and milestones from your past.

You know that we can create cards, canvases, custom in-house framing and other items, but you may have never thought that some of the images that AREN’T milestones deserve their place of glory too.

Pixels On Paper Wilkesboro NC Hirsch Reilly family and baby outdoor portrait photos

Above is a gorgeous mom and daughter, but there is also another narrative that goes from maternity to newborn to outdoor family shoot to their 2 children during the holiday season. Consider an arrangement of portraits or canvases that tells that particular story.

Another option we created before and would love to create again: engagement to the early parent years. The Arnold family below are a photogenic bunch, but before they were a party of 4, there was a love story.

Undergraduate love at UNC-Chapel and an engagement portrait session.

Fairy tale wedding filled with joy and glamour…

Welcome to the family little Miss Berklee! And man, was she a cutie pie.

For baby number 2, a boy, husband Jeremy surprised his wife Meghan with a “formal” outdoor maternity portrait session. He even chose the wardrobe for everyone.

And then they were 4. Wyatt joined the tribe in late spring, 2018.

A little over a year ago, we captured them all in a fall outdoor picnic setting.

Yes, time flies, but that doesn’t mean we cannot mark it, rememeber it, relish it and surround ourselves with its best moments.

ALL PIXELS CLIENTS: if you would like for me to reload an expired gallery for you to review, just contact me. You can revisit those special images and consider adding to your collection of memories at home or plan gifts for the future. We would love to take this time to design albums for you.


We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddingsbrides, and special events and portraits  of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.

88x31 lucy & glens valle crucis wedding photography | pixels on paper boone wedding photographers

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States LicenseAll photos are ©2019 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.

Fresh Air Wins!

We cannot gather these days. Covid-19 has rattled our planet and right now, it is alternately culturally fascinating and personally terrifying. We are all trying to make the best of it. I’ve found that it’s easier for some, based on occupation or temperament, or both. Ryan and I hope that each of you is playing it smart, listening to voices of reason and taking counsel from doctors and the CDC.

Pixels On Paper Photographers Wilkesboro NC High School Senior Portrait Photography Photo

The good news is that the outdoors are still a room we can enter and it’s a big one. If you can distance yourselves appropriately (6 feet, folks and why not follow the rules?!) and still get out to walk and hike, I hope you will. Following are some images of our beloved clients and friends in Mother Nature, created by Father God. If you can, go out and take the air.

Pixels On Paper Wilkesboro NC Photographers Senter family and baby outdoor portrait photo
Pixels On Paper Wilkesboro NC Hirsch Reilly family and baby outdoor portrait photos
Pixels On Paper Photographers Driver family outdoor spring peach orchard wilkesboro nc portrait photo

“Come with me into the woods where spring is
advancing, as it does, no matter what,
not being singular or particular, but one
of the forever gifts, and certainly visible.”
― Mary Oliver

We are nature.
Our bodies carry its swimming waters.
We are made of the soil
and eat the plants that grow from it.
From dust to dust
we come and go.

Each time I bring
my hands to my heart
in prayer,
flowing my body with my breath,
it is devotional,
a dance with the earth
and of the earth.

I dance with every tree,
sway with the wind,
bloom with every flower
in my being.

My breath,
Mother Earth,
is yours.

—the whole planet is in me”
― Ashley Asti, Yoga Heartsongs

Minick Outdoor Maternity Portrait Photography

“Mother Nature is calling you,
To embrace with her green hue!”
― Md. Ziaul Haque

Pixels on Paper engagement photographers Biltmore Estate photos

“Listen closely. Even the trees exhale sweet love songs that roll off their boughs and echo out to all of creation. Love is always in the air.”
― Cristen Rodgers

“May you all wander and explore mother nature so that one day when you look back you have so much in your heart to tell…real stories to tell to your kids instead fake stories or giving them tablets or phones – just random thoughts ”
― Guru Z S Gill


We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddingsbrides, and special events and portraits  of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.

88x31 lucy & glens valle crucis wedding photography | pixels on paper boone wedding photographers

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States LicenseAll photos are ©2019 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.

Why Print Your Portraits?

We’re glad you asked. Honestly, I could write a book on the “look at my phone” fatigue that I personally and many of my friends have shared they too suffer from. At dinner or at work, we pass our phones back and forth and smile and nod and often it’s fine. But printing your professional photos and portraits gives you way more.

Gifts that keep giving!

For starters, prints make amazing gifts. On canvas or in frames, calendars or scrapbooks, people want to spend time with a photo vs. swiping a screen only slightly larger than a business card.

You Re-Live the Moment

I have a pal whose mom says, “you take a trip 3 times: once when you’re planning; again when you’re there and a third time when you look at the photos.” The same is true for big milestones or simple hikes in the woods. Make a print and you return to that moment, that day, that kiss, that ensemble every time you look at it.

Prints Make Great Decor

Pottery, plants, tapestries and wall art make your home or office uniquely yours. What puts your signature on it though is when it is personal and photography does that better than anything else. When we create custom walls for our clients, they give us a sense of the space and we bring their vision to fruition. We even come to your place to hang it so that there is symmetry and artistry in the final result.

Prints Make You Happy

While prints make superb birthday, graduation, holiday, Mother’s/Father’s/Grandparent’s Day gift, they also make you happy. Yes, you’re reliving a moment (see above), but you’re also just stopping in the current moment. I feel a sense of comfort and general happiness when I look at photo prints. They remind me how far I’ve come and are markers of the life I’ve lived.

What Pixels Offers

We create specialty products for our clients including canvases, framed images that we create in-house per your specifications, Proof boxes filled with 4×6 prints, custom books, invitations and announcements, and slideshows set to music. Contact us through social media, email or by phone if you have a specialty item you would like made from your photos. It’s never to late.


We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddingsbrides, and special events and portraits  of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.

88x31 lucy & glens valle crucis wedding photography | pixels on paper boone wedding photographers

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States LicenseAll photos are ©2019 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.

Flashback blog: What to Wear to your portrait session

We’ve been promoting our Pixels portrait sessions for families, prom, day in the life and most recently our orchard sessions.

As you are thinking about planning your session, click this link for a little refresher about what to wear when having professional portraits taken. Spoiler: it’s a no stress thing!!

Martinez family outdoor portrait photos Pixels On Paper North Wilkesboro NC photographers

We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddingsbrides, and special events and portraits  of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.

88x31 lucy & glens valle crucis wedding photography | pixels on paper boone wedding photographers

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States LicenseAll photos are ©2019 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.

Orchard photos ~ time to schedule for Spring 2020

Hello, Outdoor Lovers! Even though we’ve not quite reached the first day of spring, you can almost smell it in the air. Pixels has the exclusive use of a gorgeous orchard and for more than a decade we’ve photographed babies, families, proposals, engagement and prom photos there. It’s time to schedule yours for spring 2020.

For us, this place is magic and more than a few families have chosen to return with us over the years to chronicle the growth of their children or specific milestones. It’s fresh and pretty and there are loads of places to grab portraits that make heirlooms and perfect Mother’s Day or Grandparent’s Day gifts.

We are now booking sessions for March and April, so contact us and let’s start plotting a session among the blossoms. These sessions are limited and happen only for a narrow window of time based totally on whatever wheather Mother Nature throws our way. Get on our schedule early!


We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddingsbrides, and special events and portraits  of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.

88x31 lucy & glens valle crucis wedding photography | pixels on paper boone wedding photographers

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States LicenseAll photos are ©2019 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.