A picture is worth a thousand words and can sometimes say all of the things you always wished you could tell people. Our approach to portraiture is one that looks at the people (and pets!) who come to us and find out what makes the essense of who they are. We don't rely on fancy sets or backdrops (we do have some of those if you want). We don't surround people with lots of nifty props to give something more dimension. Instead, we look at the soul of a person and try to make that uniqueness shine through in the image. Our portraiture is about YOU.

01. BOOKING
To book a portraiture session with us, you need to decide if you want to be in our studio or have us come to you at another location. We do have additional fees for leaving the studio. See the pricing chart below to get an idea. Once you know where you want to be photographed, you'll need to decide how many poses you might want to do. This number usually changes when you come into the studio if you're doing senior portraits. Most other people have an idea. If you change outfits, that counts as a new pose. If you add another person into a photo, that's a new pose. The number of poses you are looking for is going to determine your 'sitting fee' and the length of time that you will be booked in for at the studio. After you have this situated, pick a date and time and give us a call at (810) 985-3250 to book yourself in!

02. PREPARATIONS
It's important to put a little thought into your photo session with us. We've put together some suggestions for you to keep in mind. We DO have a changing room in the studio for you to change outfits and we also have two bathrooms as well.

• Get a good night sleep the night before. Bloodshot eyes, bags and all of those lovely "I'm sleepy" indicators show up VERY well through a lens. This doesn't matter if you are 2, 16 or 64. Get a good night's rest.
• Don't get drunk or high the night before. Or the day of. We don't make any judgments on your lifestyle choices but again, the symptoms of those behaviors will show up quite clearly in your photographs.
• Style your hair, do your make-up and any of those other things. We don't do this stuff for you.
• Avoid wearing clothes with super crazy patterns. Stripes aren't usually a good idea either.
• Try and match your clothing to the color backdrops and locations. If you want lots of blue backdrops, don't show up wearing colors that clash with blue. If you want advice on color planning, give us a call.
• Eat a light meal before coming in. Hungry models are never happy models.


03. PAYMENTS
When you book with us, in order to hold your date, we require a $20 deposit. This is non-refundable if you don't give us at least 48 hours notice of cancellation. While we regret having to impose a deposit to book, it has become necessary due to the number of no-shows we've had. This deposit can be paid via cash, personal check, or with PayPal. PayPal allows you to use credit cards, debit cards or do bank transfers. To pay with a credit card, you do not need to have a PayPal account. We'll give you instructions on how to pay via PayPal.

On the day of your shoot, you will pay your entire sitting fee sans your $20 deposit. So if you have a $60 sitting fee, expect to pay us an additional $40 to make up the difference.

After you review your proofs and are ready to place your order for prints, we require 50% up front on the total cost of the prints.

NOTE- If you pay via personal check, your prints will NOT be released to you until the check has cleared the bank. Any returned checks are subject to a $35 fee.

04. PAYMENT PLANS
We know that photography is expensive and we do everything we can to make sure that you can afford to utilize our services. Therefore, we offer the option of what is essentially a photography lay-away. You can arrange to pay us in installments that will accumulate in an account for you to use when you book your appointment. For example, if you wanted to do senior portraits in May, you could make $50/month payments starting in January to build up a $250 credit to apply towards our services. This money IS refundable at all points in time. No interest accumulates. No fees are charged.

05. PRICING
Here's the part you've probably been looking for. Since this page is quite long already, we've stuck our pricing on another page. CLICK HERE to see our 2008 portraiture prices. We've made this into a PDF file that you can download and print because some people really like the piece of paper.