About Us
Our Photography
Every time we photograph an event or make a portrait we use black and white film as a matter of course, and print archival enlargements in our own darkroom from the negatives, using traditional fine-art papers. However, our color photographs are all made nowadays with high-resolution digital cameras. Our traditional approach to black and white photography interacts with, informs, and helps us to maintain artistic integrity within, the best of the very new: high-resolution digital color photography. Click on Portfolios above to see a wide selection of our photographs. Note that every black and white photo in the portfolios was shot on black and white film and processed in our studio.
We are the only studio in many, many miles that regularly employs this audacious combination of traditional photography and up-to-the-minute technology. We alone in the Tri-state area make exclusive use of traditional film and hand-printing for our black and white photographs while enthusiastically employing the cameras, computer software, and expertise required to harness the power of our stunning new modality: digital photography.
This
combination of tradition with up-to-the-minute technology allows us to
make the finest black and white and color images. And we enjoy having
the best of both worlds! If you value photographs as highly as we do then
we hope you’ll entrust your photography to us. Our strong ties to
tradition, familiarity with the latest technology, and innovative creativity
in combining old and new, will serve you well. We offer you meaningful,
lasting portraits -- of you, your family large or small -- and a lively,
deeply-felt record of your birthdays, christenings, bar mitzvahs, weddings
and other gatherings and milestone events.
The aesthetic foundations of our work lie in the long tradition of artist photographers. This lineage goes back at least as far as the portraits that were made in Britain by Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson in the mid-nineteenth century. Most artists working in this tradition have not been professional portraitists. They have generally relied on other sources of income. However, there have always been exceptions; in this country, Gertrude Käsebier, Edward Weston, and Imogen Cunningham are just three well-known examples of fine American artists from the last century who relied largely on their income from photographic portraits.
Certain
documentary photographers from the past are also especially relevant to
our work. Dorothea Lange, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Margaret Bourke-White,
and Garry Winogrand together created a genre of photographic art involving
sensitive, thoughtful, and often very striking documentation of places
and events in which they found—or placed—themselves. We are
very proud to associate ourselves with this tradition of documentary artists
too.
As we have already made clear, we are not simply backwards-looking traditionalists: our color photographs are never recorded on film. We use exclusively high-resolution digital cameras for color. They give us significantly better results than we could obtain using film.
However, unlike other professional photographers in the area and for many miles around, we continue to use “old-fashioned” film for all our black and white photographs! Why? Why not use digital cameras now to capture the black and white photographs as well as the color ones? It is cheaper and simpler to do so. Virtually everyone else does it — except for fine art photographers. Again: why do we not follow the cheaper, easier route?
First because we can't print digital files onto the fine old papers that are still made and are so lovely and so lasting. Unless we make our black and white images from negatives, and print them on old-fashioned fiber paper, we can't produce the beautiful black and white photographs that we love and that your children's children's children will cherish if you pass them down through your family. That alone is reason enough for us to make our black and white images the old way, starting out with film.
But there is more. Fine black and white photographs possess a very special property, a texture, a graininess that comes from the silver granules in the film on which they were exposed. Like wood grain: every piece of wood has its own characteristic grain derived from the growth patterns of the tree it came from. Every true black and white photograph likewise has its own unique grain. Use plastic to build a table and you miss the beauty of wood grain in your table. Use a digital camera and your black and white photographs also have no grain. Often the texture of film-based black and whites is quite subtle; sometimes it is very powerful. Either way, in the hands of a sensitive photographer the grain structure itself forms a central component of the photograph. (Color photos, even when made from film, possess no significant grain since that is lost in processing.)
So we still offer true black and white photographs built on the foundation of the silver halides in the film on which they were exposed – following the traditions of fine art photographers past and present. It’s well worth the extra effort and it will preserve your black and white wedding photographs and portraits for many generations.
Our Work
Much
of our work is with people: weddings, and portraits, especially portraits
of children, senior portraits, and engagement portraits. The photographs
we make are as candid, relaxed, and natural as we can manage.
We photograph people as we see them, avoiding clichés, sentimentality, over-dramatization, and superficiality. Whatever the occasion, we try to make each of our subjects as comfortable with us as we can, and then photograph them honestly and sympathetically.
During a portrait session, rather than pushing you into unnatural and stressful poses we search for ways to help you (or your children) feel and look happy and relaxed. We meet you in order to get to know you before we set up a portrait date. We use only the simplest of backgrounds. We have toys around the studio for the kids to play with. We play with them, and we are patient but quick. When the weather cooperates, we are very happy to work outside.
In
preparation for photographing a wedding, we meet with you well beforehand
to get to know you, to understand your personalities and families and
to make you feel comfortable working with us. If you book your wedding
far enough in advance, we’d like to make an engagement portrait
of you, since this gives us a chance to work together. For the wedding
day itself, we carefully set the work up so that we are in the background,
supportive, watching for photographs, but never intrusive.
In addition to photographing Weddings (and other events and celebrations), we make many kinds of Portraits: academic, engagement, family, individual, publicity, high school seniors, Children and Pets. To find out more about how we photograph these, click on the buttons, here or above or for engagement portraits click on Weddings. There are lots of examples of all sorts of portraits in the Portfolios.
Our photography extends beyond the studio in many ways. These may well be of interest to you. Although all our photographers employ similar styles, each has some rather special interests. Four of us have included, under Our Personal Work, in the Portfolios, images that reflect our special interests. Many were made in our own time, some on commission, some just for fun. These images include animals, birds, insects, flowers, photographs painted with oils, urban and other landscapes, demolition and construction photographs, and other genres. Many of these images are for sale, and we all work on commission. You will find descriptions, a few prices and some discussion of the work by clicking on the button Our Personal Work above, and lots of examples of our personal work itself in the Portfolios.
Our Photographers
At present there are three senior photographers associated with the studio, each of whom acts as Principal Photographer at weddings, responsible for the photography on the day itself in consultation with the others. While our photographic backgrounds differ we each work within the same artistic traditions, paying little attention to the fashions and norms of contemporary professional photography.
Frank Heny, the owner, who was born in Zimbabwe, and has lived for years in Europe and the US, has a background in cognitive science and philosophy, with a Ph.D. from UCLA. He spent many years in college teaching and research. More recently, he has spent over twenty years working full time in photography, the last nineteen building up this studio in Pittsburgh. He has also taught photography in Pittsburgh and has exhibited work locally and elsewhere.
James Woomer became associated with the studio eight years ago. He continued to make portraits, especially fine pet portraits, do fashion photography and photograph weddings on his own account. Over the years he has greatly increased his commitment to us and makes a very significant contribution to the studio. James' degree in photography is from Oakbridge Academy of Arts. His personal work includes animal photography, urban landscapes and narrative image-sets similar to those associated with the well-known contemporary Pennsylvania photographer Duane Michaels.
Emily Carlson has been associated with the studio for nearly four years. She has helped us photograph a variety of weddings during this period, and has covered a number of weddings on her own account. In 2006 she graduated from Point Park University, and has pursued her interests in child portraiture, nature photography (especially flowers and insects), and industrial landscapes. We are very happy to have her continue with us as a Principal Photographer.
In addition to the principals, there are a number of other photographers who assist us in various ways at weddings and in the studio. All share our approach. Among these, one should be singled out: Malgorzata Mosiek, a designer and photographer who has her own website http://www.mmosiek.com/. There you will see examples of her bird photographs and other work. She has been the driving force and brains behind the wonderful facelift which has just been given to this website and has also begun helping us to photograph weddings.
Each of the above four photographers has included, in the Portfolios, images that reflect our special interests. For information about that work click on the button Our Personal Work at the top of this page‹ or just go to the Portfolios.
Our Studio
Our studio is in Shadyside, Pittsburgh (See Contact Information). We do all our black and white printing here, and much of our portraiture in the studio or nearby.
Our weddings are photographed mainly in the Pittsburgh area, though a large percentage of our clients actually live elsewhere, and we are very happy to travel well beyond our immediate area. We have photographed weddings and other events, not only elsewhere in Pennsylvania, but also in Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Washington DC, New York, Kentucky — and England.