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.
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 weddings, brides, 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.
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.
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.
“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
“Mother Nature is calling you,
To embrace with her green hue!”
― Md. Ziaul Haque
“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 weddings, brides, 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.
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 weddings, brides, 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.
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.
A Change of Focus
During the first couple of months of 2020, I’ve been sharing the types of images, events, projects and portrait sessions that Ryan and I will be focusing on in the coming year and years to come. We are moving away from being working wedding photographers, something that we’ve done for nearly 2 decades and the part of our business that put us on the map. It was and wasn’t an easy decision, but I thought I would speak from the heart about it briefly – because that is how “I do.”
Our Life Shifted
A mere two years ago, we had a child added to our lives and he deserves not only our attention, but our guidance. We are not bubble baby people. Finley is out in the community with us, he meets many of our clients, he is sweet to his young peers having their photos taken in our studio and we haul him to Merlefest. This kid GETS DIRTY with his grandparents and helping around our property.
Ryan and I want our son to be fully immersed in the world – to see and show love and empathy to other people, to experience all sorts of joys, challenges and triumphs.
That is OUR responsibility as his mom and dad and it means making time that would have otherwise been spent photographing, organizing and editing weddings.
Our Professional Passions Shifted
When we began to focus more on Day in the Life and personal documentary style photography, families and babies it was ON. I enjoy it more than I can describe. I couldn’t be more proud of our 15 years as successful wedding photographers and remember many times having to double book weekends and turn potential clients away. Wedding portraiture and wedding day photography require not only extensive amounts of time, creative skills, lighting expertise and flexibility, these types of projects require an enormous amount of technical know-how and our work speaks for itself.
But personal documentary portraits are calling to me and the more we take – during all seasons and with all types of families – the more I know that it’s where I want to really “play at work” as a pro.
The Photography Landscape Shifted
Andy Warhol……. how did you know? In 1968, he said, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”
You all don’t need me to tell you that there has been a democratization of creativity over the last decade. If you have a smart phone, you can be writer, photographer, philosopher, curator, documentary film-maker and archivist, regardless of your age, socio-economics, gender or race. Capture every aspect of your life, publish it to social media and in your circle you’re seen and known. I’m not even remotely “mad at this.” Expression is one of life’s most important and even most healing joys.
What I have found, however, is a disintegration in our concepts of and respect for experience, skill and professionalism. Companies like Voice Bunny, Fivver and even Craig’s List allow pretty much anyone – untested – to have a hand in what used to be professional work that people trained and worked to be good at. Again, if it’s lightening in a bottle, fabulous!
But when I saw a poorly dressed person (ripped jeans and tee shirt) show up as the hired photographer for a wedding, I began to wonder. She was not a close family friend. She was hired to capture what most of us agree is one of life’s biggest days. Her backup equipment was a single smart phone.
At Pixels we understood the mosaic of skills it took to shoot a wedding: the technical, the creative, and the personal.
We knew how to adjust the light at the right time to get the shot that a bride dreamt of all her life. We knew timing, gentle coaxing, coordination of personalities and spatial relations. We never photographed a wedding hoping to “get lucky” with lighting, weather, relatives, or venue. We were always ready. Always.
On average, we spent 134 hours per wedding. That is just over 3 work weeks in corporate America. From the first communication to the last bow tied around the final products delivered, we were committed to perfection, service and dreams delivered.
Now if you know me, you know that I’m not an elitist, but I do believe in expecting that people will pay for experience, decorum, knowledge, cultivated creativity and true expertise. If the marketplace no longer values these things, that’s sad, but I’m cool with it. It’s time to take a break and reevaluate.
Saying “I Will”
While Ryan and I are focusing professionally on photographing more community events, more babies, more family portraiture, more Day in the Life and commercial photography, we are saying “We Will” to some weddings, but are no longer promoting ourselves as working wedding photographers. At least for the foreseeable future. If you are what we define as a “legacy client” (ie: we’ve photographed you, your immediate family, best friend, or you have a strong recommendation from a client) we will consider photographing your wedding. If you want to reach out about your wedding, we can chat, but we aren’t actively seeking that business.
Thanks for listening and understanding. This blog may not have been the hike you were looking for – the quickie 1.5 mile loop – and you ended up on Mount Pisgah. My apologies. I simply love you all and wanted to be as transparent about the future as I am thoroughly excited about it.
Love,
Misty
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!!
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 weddings, brides, 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.
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.