I had a great time creating with Matt. He’s a great drummer, and he’s kind of a big deal on YouTube. Enjoy the photos!

Kenia came to us having some of our portraits, and she wanted to look as beautiful as the pictures she had seen. She IS beautiful, and we had a fun time making pictures together!

I had a great time with Roman at Kingsburg High School, and God gave us a gorgeous sunset to work with. Roman’s a good guy and an athlete, so we played around with the ball field and parking lots in our quest for authentic awesome. Enjoy the photo!

I visited the Shinzen Japanese Garden at Woodward Park with the Hernandez family last week, and we had a great time telling their family’s story in pictures.  Here are a few of my favorites.  I’m really enjoying these Family LifeStyle Portrait sessions.  Visit out Contact page to schedule a consultation for your session today!

I had a great time making pictures with Jeremy and Allison. They’re a fun couple who love to laugh together, and they have a style all their own. (And it’s a style that’s fun to photograph!) I’m looking forward to their wedding!

While I was building Shinn Photo, I had a question.  It was a question that I never answered in the original business plan, and it was an important one: “Why should anyone use your service?  What makes you different than other photographers?”  I had to fill in the blank, so I said something useless about artistic, high-quality photos.  But in my heart, the question remained unanswered.  Whenever I try to write marketing copy, this question rears its head again.  I hate writing things like, “Shinn Photo is the best!”  They ring hollow and sound like echo-y bragging.

7 years later, the answer has finally emerged.  Like  many meaningful answers, it came as the result of a journey, not as a sudden flash of obvious epiphany.  Here’s what I learned:

Two things are important.  Both of them have to do with our clients, not our company.

• We tell authentic stories.  All of our clients are real people, and it’s totally possible to tell profound visual stories about real people.  Real doesn’t mean ordinary; it means that you have to see the world with eyes of wonder to appreciate the beauty in front of you.  Someone recently told us, “I like the first session [the consultation] where I felt like they got to know who I was, and what I was interested in.  It was more personable than I ever expected.”  Another person told us, “We liked the personal feel of each picture.”  That’s the best validation I can imagine.

• We make product that fit into our clients’ lives.  We’ve done a lot of thinking about how people actually use pictures.  We don’t want to make great images and have them end up in a shoebox under someone’s bed.  That’s why we sit down with our clients and start to think with them about how to use their portraits before they’re even taken.  Our goal isn’t to add value to the photos; it’s to add utility.  It’s better to buy one product that will fit into your life than three useless ones!

You can frame these two priorities in many ways.  One of my favorites is the art | craft dichotomy.  Our art flows from the time we take to care about people: personal art.  Our craftsmanship is evident in the products we make, and the places they end up.

I know this is a lot of text, and if you’ve made it this far, leave a comment below to let me know.  Thanks for reading!

The blossoms are a big deal around here, almost worshipped by the locals.  It’s easy to see why; they arrive at the most pleasant time of the year and transform our landscape into a blizzard of color.  I haven’t had the chance to go out hunting for great blossom images this year, but I’ve found myself in a few of these wondrous orchards recently with a camera in hand.  Here are a few of my favorites.  Enjoy!

Reedley High School’s Art Students have put together a great show, and are displaying it in the space next door to the studio, thanks to Veronica Barragan at Country Club Mortgage.  We’ll be hosting a reception at the studio on Thursday, with details below.  If you’re not able to make it Thursday, at least stop by and see the art in the front window.  It’s great stuff, and a wonderful celebration of Spring!  The show will be up all month, making Downtown Reedley look just a little bit more swell.