First of all, a big, warm welcome! We’re a mother & son team of photographers with many years of experience in both photography and design. We love to photograph families, couples, high school seniors and pets. You’ll find that our friendly, casual style will put you right at ease, resulting in portraits that look natural and unposed. A little background info about us and our unique business model:
Toby graduated Magna Cum Laude from The University of South Dakota with a bachelor of science degree in Contemporary Media & Journalism. He began working with design and Photoshop on a Mac at the tender age of 11 and built his first web site by age 12. With an expert skill level in all Adobe Creative Suite applications including Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign and Dreamweaver, Toby brings considerable talent and creativity to our team. He’s a bold designer and award-winning photographer with a contemporay style and intuitive sense of marketing ensured to give our clientele that cutting-edge advantage. The Rapid City Dahl Mountain Photo Contest selected one of Toby’s photos to be included in its 2007 contest and gallery exhibit. 29 photos were chosen from over 240 entries for inclusion in the exhibit. With a dedicated work ethic, creative 6th sense and friendly, polite nature, you’ll find Toby a joy to work with.
Having been a web site developer since 1996, Lynn holds the distinction of being a widely respected pioneer in the industry. Eight years of prior experience in print advertising and over 25 years as a traditional artist equip her with skills and insights held valuable today in the field of web design & development. She is proficient in the use of Adobe Creative Suite, XHTML, CSS, PHP, and SEO best practices. In addition to web design and development, Lynn also specializes in digital photography, a skill she uses to give her design projects a unique touch. She has been the recipient of numerous photography awards and dozens of advertising journalism awards from the South Dakota Newspaper Association. She was honored when the 2005 Grammy Awards Ceremony featured one of her photographs as a backdrop during a production number performed by Queen Latifah. Her photography has also been featured in numerous books, magazines, brochures and web sites, including Oprah.com
Most photographers charge a basic sitting fee, then edit the photos they think you’ll want to buy and charge you again for each print your order. You may think you own the images, but in reality, the photographer owns legal rights to the digital negatives. When you purchase prints from a photographer, you are paying a per-print price and do not have the right to make copies of them.
Most professional photographers use online print services like Mpix. Here’s an example of their cost to have your images printed:
Then they mark up the print prices and sell them to you at a significant profit. There’s nothing dishonest about that, but our business model is different. We deliver your digital photos with a release form giving you unlimited reproduction rights for both printed products and web posting. We never place distracting watermarks on your photos, but we always appreciate a photo credit. (We don’t monitor that. It’s on the honor system.)
We retain the original copyright of the photos we create. It’s the same concept as an artist signing a painting and then selling that painting to a customer who can do with it as they please. The buyer owns the artwork, but the identity of the artist who created it remains known.
Our business model isn’t the only thing about us that’s different. While many photographers are still struggling to convert from traditional film photography to newer digital technology, we’ve been shooting that way since the inception of the first digital cameras. Our background includes 20 years of shooting professional stock photography images, including custom portraiture for the web sites we develop. We have extensive skills and knowledge in every aspect of digital photography and professional processing techniques. We are proficient in the use of all Adobe Creative Suite applications, with decades of experience in Photoshop retouching methods.
Our style is photojournalistic. We take time to put you at ease in a relaxed atmosphere and shoot in an informal manner. This style results in more natural looking expressions and poses. Your portraits will reflect your unique personality, and won’t look similar to anyone else’s. Most photographers work alone. That means you get one viewpoint expressed in your final portraits. It also means that if equipment malfunctions at a crucial time, (think: The Wedding Kiss) you may not have an image of one of the most important moments of your life. That’s why we work as a team. With 2 photographers shooting simultaneously from different vantage points with varying lenses, you end up with a greater variety of images and greatly lessen the chance that an important moment will be missed.
We shoot in a format known as Raw. This is the purest form of digital photography and gives us the highest quality images possible, with the greatest amount of detail and pixel-perfect control over the final editing process. We shoot with Canon digital SLR cameras and lenses, paired with creative, innovative lighting equipment. Our workflow includes the expert processing/retouching of all images using the most recent version of Adobe Creative Suite.