A Pittsburgh Wedding and Portrait Photography Studio
Our Work
We
work with people. Almost all the time. We photograph Weddings,
bar mitzvahs and other events, and make portraits, especially portraits
of Children. Also academic, family, individual,
publicity, and senior/graduation Portraits and
cool portraits of Pets. The photographs are
candid, relaxed, and natural.
Our studio only has very simple backgrounds, but lots of toys for the kids to play with. We're patient, we goof around a bit to keep the atmosphere laid-back, but we work very fast so you have no time to get tense or scared or bored. In good weather we love to photograph outside: kids, grown-ups, weddings.
In
preparation for photographing a wedding or other event, we meet with you
well beforehand to get to know you, to understand your personalities and
families and to help you feel comfortable working with us. If
you make contact with us long enough before the wedding, let us make an
engagement portrait! That's a terrific way to get to know us
and see if you'd like us to photograph your wedding. The engagement session
is always a lot of fun. You'll find that we make little effort to pose
you; if possible we'll just take a stroll around Mellon Park and make
photographs as we go. On your wedding day we'll keep an even lower profile;
you'll scarcely notice us.
Although our studio mainly photographs people, our own personal work is different! Four of us have images on this website that reflect our wide interests. They deal with animals, birds, insects, flowers. Some are painted with oils. There are urban and other landscapes, demolition and construction photographs, and more. Many are for sale, and we all work on commission. You will find descriptions, a few prices, and some discussion of the work, if you click Personal Work here or above.
There are lots of wedding photos and all sorts of portraits as well as our personal work in the Portfolios. Go back now and take another look!
Our Photography: Film-based and Digital
How odd we are! We capture our black and white photos on film, using old-fashioned cameras for this, and we print archival enlargements of the negatives in our own darkroom, on traditional, fiber-based fine-art papers. Yet our color photographs are all captured as high-resolution digital files. Thus we mix traditional black and white with the best of high-tech digital color. In the Portfolios section every black and white image was shot on black and white film and processed in our studio.
We
are the only studio in many miles that employs this audacious combination
of traditional and up-to-the-minute technology. We go to this trouble
because it's the only way we can make both the finest black and white
images and the finest color photos too. You get the best of both worlds
from us and you simply can't get it elsewhere!
Why do we not use our digital cameras to capture the black and white photographs as well as the color ones? It would be cheaper and simpler to do so. Virtually all the other professional photographers do it that way&mdash but not the fine art photographers. Including our studio. We're all purists, following the old way. What do we gain by taking the more expensive, more difficult and time-consuming route? Simply put: much better black and white photos which look great and will last centuries.
There are two main reasons why this is so. First, you can't print digital
files onto the fine old papers that are still used by real photographic
artists. At the present time, the only way to print beautiful, archival
black and white photographs is to capture the images the old way, on film.
Secondly, and this is crucial, true black and white photographs possess a unique 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, which is derived from the growth patterns of the tree it came from. And every true black and white photograph likewise has its own unique grain. We seldom notice this grain directly, but it's what gives true black and white photos their special character.
Use plastic to make a table and your table is just dead, flat plastic with no grain at all. Use a digital camera and your black and white photographs will likewise have no grain, little character.
(Color photos, even when made from film, possess no significant grain since that is lost in processing. Black and white and color photographs are really very different. Consequently, digital color loses nothing over film-based color; in fact it's often more intense and interesting.)
In sum, our black and white photographs depend for their quality on the structure of the silver halide granules in the film, and on the fine paper on which film-based images can be printed. In making these photographs we follow the traditions of fine art photographers past and present.
Our Heritage
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.
Our Studio and Photographers
Our studio is in 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 happily travel far and wide. We have photographed weddings and other events, not only all over Pennsylvania, but also in Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Washington DC, New York, Kentucky — and England.
At present there are three senior photographers associated with the studio, each of whom acts as Principal Photographer at weddings, bar mitzvahs and similar events, 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 also been the Principal Photographer on a number of occasions. She is also 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. 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 she 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 Our Personal Work.
Among the other photographers who assist us regularly in our wedding and event photogrpahy are Ahren Hollis, and Angela Swift, both of whom have extensive training and experience, and greatly enrich our photography with their work.
