It’s time to shake the dust off my blogging fingers and let the high school class of 2020 know that SPCcreative is back up and running and ready to create the perfect senior portraits for you.
The past two years have been hard for us here at SPCcreative. It was two years ago just last week that Hurricane Harvey ate our home and our studio, trying his hardest to knock us to the ground. The road back has not been a fun or easy one, but finally we are in a very good place and feel blessed beyond measure, but that’s a whole ‘nother blog post.
Over these two years, I pulled back drastically from my business to take care of our rebuilding efforts and to do my best to stay calm and focused. During that time period I did not actively market our services, and only took on a few select clients one at a time. As much as I love working with seniors, it was my choice that I only photographed SIX of them over those two years. Yep, just six. But that was good. Each session brought us new challenges that made me wonder if I should be shooting at all. Some days I could barely even find my camera. Still in spite of our need to wing it, every single one of these kids absolutely ROCKED their sessions. Check ’em out!
You’ve got to hand it to them, the kids who came to us for portraits in 2018 and 2019 were great sports. We improvised like never before, providing hair and makeup in among hanging painters drop cloths while balancing ourselves on paint buckets and hopping over stacks of flooring material.
Oh … and it was all dusty. SO.VERY. DUSTY.
We blocked up windows with black plastic and moved backdrops and lights into whatever room could offer us just a little space. We adjusted our outdoor angles to cleverly hide the contractor’s porta potty.
We laughed.
What other choice did we have?
Thankfully most of the outdoor sets in our Studio backlot survived being submerged. We tossed a few things, hosed the mud off the rest, added fresh paint here and there, and brought in a few new fun props to pull off some fun fresh concepts. Oh, and the piano! What a find! How many studios do YOU know with their very own outdoor piano?
Class of 2020 — Here’s Lookin’ at You.
This year’s gonna be so bright you’ll def need shades.
We’re currently booking senior portrait experiences for the class of 2020. With only a couple of openings left in October and November, it’s already time to plan ahead into spring break. The best dates are filling fast.
Let’s mix your look and personality with our expertise. Together we’ll create the senior portraits you’ve dreamed of. Call the studio today at 281.773.7465. Let’s start planning your portraits now.
I simply MUST share my favorite new Christmas Tradition with you. If you do something twice during the holidays and you enjoy it, it becomes a tradition, right?
THIS is how the Wallace Family of Katy, Texas rolls!
Seriously, they’ve got to be the FUNNEST Christmas Family in Texas.
You see, It all started when Mom, Jenny, called in 2017 looking for a fun and unique family Christmas card. They had a general concept in mind, but needed a pro to help them pull it off. Oh my goodness! It was exactly the project that had been bubbling in my own brain for quite a while, and suddenly these people just called me to create it! How does that even happen? Did I ever tell you how much I LOVE my job?
As we began planning for our session, I reached out to one of my photography instructors and friends, Dan McLanahan. Dan is very well-known in professional circles for his amazing skills and talents, but my brain at this time was all-consumed by the reknown “Friday Night Food Fight” composite that he had created a year before. Click on this link to check it out! Dan gave me some pointers to help make our session go smoothly, and he also offered a gentle but extremely helpful critique during the post-production stages of Christmas Kitchen Chaos 2017.
The magic of a project like this comes in compiling several photographs until one composite image is complete. I don’t know what part of this scenario I enjoyed the most.
It could have been Scott’s flaming skillet. (Yes we used real fire).
Or Jenny’s flying flour which looked so realistic because the sons hid behind the island throwing flour and mashed potato flakes into the air until we captured our perfect messy cloud.
Maybe it was Braden’s athletic skills catching a football mid-air with his LEFT hand so that we could still see his face –HOW MANY TIMES?
Josh’s feigned boredom with the whole scenario absolutely cracked me up because it couldn’t have been further from reality. In fact, he offered keen thoughts, insight, and even served as a voice-activated lightstand throughout the session both last year and this year.
However, the story I LOVE to tell about this shoot is about the family dog, Brinkley. This dog is so well-trained that he absolutely refused to steal the lasagna off the counter. In order to make that scenario happen, we had to send dad to another part of the house while Jenny and the sons coerced and tempted him.
This was my first ever attempt at a relatively complex composite image, and it was so much fun. The Christmas card recipients started asking what this year’s card would look like, and the Wallaces quickly realized that they couldn’t ever go back to a traditional smiling family portrait card.
When they called me this year, we sat down together and brainstormed until we came up with a new concept.
Deck the Halls — Wallace Style
The family has actually experienced a couple of real-life falling Christmas tree incidents, so they knew that their friends and relatives would understand the significance.
Everyone maintained their basic persona from 2017. Jenny’s tripping over her own enthusiasm, and so surprised that she’s practically juggling the ornaments as they smash to the floor. Josh is once again absorbed in his technology and light untangling mess. Braden’s adding Santa to the top of the tree — Elf Style. And of course we’ve got Scott, once again about to burn down the house with his Griswold-inspired electrical connection.
We even included last year’s card on the television screen at the back of the room.
Best memory from this year’s photography session? The pure thrill on the guys’ faces when they got to actually throw glass ornaments up into the air, allowing them to smash on the ground. Josh said it was the one thing that you’re always told not to do.
“Don’t drop the ornaments, don’t let them break, be careful with them. Don’t make a mess.”
But on this one day we shattered ornaments on the floor and made a royal mess.
Merry Christmas from SPCcreative Photography via The Wallace Family.
This is Brandon. He’s graduating in just a few short weeks from Kempner High School, and I’m so glad that we were able to photograph this handsome young man.
Planning his senior portrait session presented quite a challenge. He was scheduled to come in last fall, but because of Hurricane Harvey, our entire studio, both inside and out was a shambles. He and his mom graciously and patiently offered to wait while we mucked out and rebuilt our flooded home and studio, and we felt certain that we’d be ready to roll before Spring Break. Then spring rolled around, and because contractors and supplies have been in such short supply, we were nowhere near ready.
BUT — I had committed to photograph Brandon and by-golly, we were going to make that happen. I took it as added incentive to start whipping my studio backlot into shape. By the time his newly scheduled appointment rolled around, we had about half of our sets refurbished. Our landscaping was still a big mess for the most part.
YET — with creative camera angles and a lot of hard work, there is always a way.
It took a little extra maneuvering, but I”ll bet you would never guess that if Brandon (or the camera) moved just a few inches to the right or left, his portraits by the tree (below) would have included a…
wait for it… wait for it…
A bright blue PORTA-POTTY!
My absolute FAVORITE images, though, were the ones we created to highlight his weight lifting. I managed to rig up a makeshift studio in an empty room, and I’m so glad we did.
THESE simply couldn’t have come out any better.
I love working with dramatic lighting patterns!
Summer’s on its way in, so I hope Brandon gets a chance to relax at the beach with his family and friends before heading off to college
I also LOVE the fact that we managed to catch a sweet “mom-kiss” before everything wrapped up.
Brandon just might miss his mother and her home-cooking when he heads off to UT San Antonio in the fall — and I KNOW that she will miss him. This fun image should make the road home seem just a little bit shorter.
No doubt about it, Demi has quite a presence in front of the camera. Is she not a gorgeous STUNNER?!
Well, look out world because here she comes.
Demi and her classmates from Foster High School will cross the stage to receive their diplomas this Saturday in what is sure to be a celebration-filled evening.
I loved working with her, and had to laugh when we were designing her graduation announcement. Let me tell you, this young woman knows exactly what she wants and how to get it.
As most of you know, my graduation announcements are totally customized for each student. We choose colors, overall feel, fonts, images… EVERYTHING to reflect the student’s personal style. No cookie-cutter announcements over here!
Most of the time I get it right – straight out of the chute with maybe a minor tweak. Not this time! Well, the black background could stay… and the wording was good… and the image selections had already been decided. BUT, I totally missed the boat on everything else. That COULD have gone very wrong, but not with Demi. She sent back her change requests, right down to the exact type style that she wanted.
Really? Nobody’s ever done that before! BUT — we do offer a custom product, and that’s what we provide — satisfaction guaranteed.
We made the changes she asked for — type-style, adding glitter to the school color gold, changing the overall layout exactly as she specified, and then everything just fell into place. She loved the end result.
That’s what I like. Someone who knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to ask for it.
I will admit that I had to swallow my pride a little bit, but it wasn’t too difficult at all because she was so very specific about how she wanted her announcement to appear.
After Graduation, Demi will attend Prairie View A&M where she plans to continue her studies and enter the field of nursing.
Congratulations on your graduation, Demi! Have a great time celebrating and reach for the stars. You’re already on target to achieve so very much.
He’s a laid-back, casual easygoing sort of a guy who’s just about ready to walk the stage and collect his diploma from Bellaire High School.
I loved his easygoing attitude about our portrait session together. With an air of relaxed confidence, he was super personable and seemed very comfortable in his own skin, up for anything.
In his spare time, he enjoys listening to music and playing video games, but as a member of the Guitar Honors Orchestra at his school, Valen is quite a talented musician in his own right.
Guitar Honors Orchestra! I didn’t even know such an ensemble existed. How cool is that?
And on the weekends, he volunteers at Gulf Coast Veterinary Specialists.
That place is super special to me and my family because they played a huge role in saving the life of our Grand Dane a few years back. Grand Dane… That’s what we call our Grand-dog who happens to be a Great Dane.
Through this work, Valen has become very comfortable working with all sorts of animals. This internship is setting a great road for him. After graduation he plans to study biomedical engineering as an undergrad, and then turn toward something in the veterinary field, possibly even specializing in exotic animals.
I was so glad that he brought his scrubs and his pup, Kaley, along to his session.
She is one of the cutest dogs I’ve seen in a long time and it’s obvious that she adores him.
Looks like the feeling is mutual too.
Congratulations, Valen on your graduation as a part of the outstanding Class of 2017. We’ll be watching for big things in the years to come.
