Ring Dance Morgan | High School Portraits Virginia Beach

• May 24th, 2016 •

It is ALWAYS an honor to photograph the Myers family. Recently, I was honored to photograph the beautiful Morgan for her Junior Ring Dance, with her handsome date Brandon.

I have been photographing Morgan for years, I think she was in elementary school when we began, and this summer we will be scheduling her SENIOR PORTRAITS!

I have been so blessed by the Myers family and to see Morgan all grown up and so beautiful, well it’s like seeing my own daughter growing up. Once so insecure and camera shy, it is so nice to see her, not just comfortable in her own skin, but ROCKING who she is becoming!

I love my job and people like the Myers family are a big reason why! Check out Morgan and Brandon’s pictures and then read below a testimony from Morgan’s mom Christy.

SENIOR PICTURES are coming up for Morgan and I can’t believe its already time to plan for this moment! Wow, so thankful one more of my kids making moves towards her dreams.
With that said I need to brag about our family photographer Devon who owns Devon Shanor Photography.
She has been there for our family’s every move; family pictures when we started over from divorce, back to school pictures, becoming sessions, ring dance, Prom, Senior pictures, Santa pictures on the beach every year, and we are currently working a cake bash for my 40th birthday… you name it she can do it and make it happen. We would be lost without Devon.
She knows my kids inside and out when it comes to pictures, she know my divas, my shy kid, my I don’t want to do this kid and she works with them all and makes it fun every time.
If you have a senior coming up Devon should be your FIRST Choice. I get this question a lot “Is she expensive?” Well I’m gonna answer that “NO SHE ISNT!” Some may think so, BUT I will say this the people that do are used to places like Olan Mills, Walmart, Portrait Innovations, etc where you have to go to a studio, get a few pre-made backdrops, set poses and prices. With Devon we get to pick location (and even poses if we want to do something crazy!) we’ve had so many differnt nature locations; just when I think we’ve done them all we find somewhere new! We’ve done the beach, Norfolk Pagoda, fields, and state parks… the possibilities are endless.
My other reason for choosing Devon, and only her, is I’ve personally have two very bad experiences with going to another photographer. one of them being for senior pictures for my daughter Katie. We hired a cheaper person for her senior pictures, thinking maybe we would get some amazing portraits art a cheaper price. Well, let me just say um…. it was awful! The pictures were blurry, the poses were horrible, she was a mom with a camera nothing more! Needless to say, we begged Devon to fit Katie in and we had them done right. Devon was wonderful about the whole thing. She did an amazing job and while I spent more than I wanted, I learned that I will never again trust anyone with my families memories except Devon.
*Side note: We had a house fire in 2014, the year my daughter graduated and we lost all of our flash drives (digital images) from every one of our sessions. Yes all of them, including those senior pictures. When I called Devon Shanor Photography crying she reminded me all my images were safe she had them all. I lost nothing and wasn’t out all the money for pictures that I could never replace. Well, I was out all of the images I had taken BEFORE Devon, the ones from Walmart and Portrait innovations, they were burned up in the fire and I had no way to replace them. But I didn’t lose the last 10 years of my family growing.
ALL OF THIS TO SAY THANK YOU MY FRIEND WE LOVE YOU!!!!! SENIORS THIS IS THE LIFE PHOTOGRAPHER YOU WANT TO SAVE YOUR MEMORIES!

Stretching Myself as a Photographer | Personal

• May 18th, 2016 •

I just returned from The Mid-Atlantic Regional School of Professional Photography (MARS) in New Jersey. It is a school I have been attending for the last seven years to stretch and grow myself as a family and portrait photographer. I love spending time with other professional photographers. Often, we will talk about WHY we became photographers and I have found that my story into becoming a professional photographer is often different than others. Most of my peers fell in love with the ART of photography. They began taking pictures at a young age and learned to develop film in a darkroom, excited by the process of photography. They often began by taking pictures of flowers, sunsets, landscapes, etc. Often that love of photography transferred into taking pictures of people. They seem to all have a deep appreciation and love for art of all kinds. They love visiting museums and often are skilled as artists with a pen, paper or paintbrush as well as behind a camera. They are passionate about art.

My story is different. I didn’t have a camera in my hand growing up and I’ve never developed film in a darkroom. I don’t often visit museums and I never did very well in art class. If you ask me to draw a dog, it might end up looking more like a horse… or a bunny. I fell in love with photography as a TOOL to capture love. I LOVE people. I am passionate about people and the connections between them. I began photography because I wanted to capture the love of family, the strength and passion in a marriage, the love of parents for their children, the connections between siblings, the transition of a young man or woman as they graduate high school and the beauty of new life in a newborn. THAT for me is the art I am passionate about. Photography for me is so exciting because it allows to to take those moments and preserve them forever.

That being said, I don’t shoot landscapes, flowers, trees, inanimate objects very often. I often will see a beautiful landscape and think “That is beautiful, I wish I had a family or couple here so I could create a beautiful portrait.” I notice the beauty, but to me, it would be made more beautiful if I could incorporate the love and connection of people into the scene.

Recently, I reconnected with an old friend who is an amazing artist in multiple different mediums. We had some long discussions about art and the definition of an “artist.” He inspired me to stretch myself and try to expand my view of art through my own photography. Don’t get me wrong, I see so much beauty and talent in landscape photographers, I have some friends who are incredibly talented in that field! I am in awe of what they capture! I just have a hard time myself bringing that same beauty to life behind my own camera.

Like I said, my friend encouraged me to try and stretch myself, and see beauty, vision and perspective in way that DON’T include people. Since I was going to be at MARS in Cape May NJ, a gorgeous place to photograph landscapes, old Victorian homes, animals, boats, etc, I decided to take him up on the challenge.

IT WAS HARD! I am so used to having a vision of what I want to photograph before I start, a vision that ALWAYS includes people. To just walk around and try to find inspiration in the objects around me… that was hard! I only really had one day to work on this personal project, and that day, it was raining and foggy. So my go-to sunrise or sunset pictures were out.

I’m definitely not ready to start selling postcards, but thought I’d share a little piece of myself with you. I feel like a brand new photographer again, as I definitely have a lot of room to grow here, but it’s important to stretch yourself and grow. Here’s me growing…

My New Office | Hampton Roads Photographer

• May 13th, 2016 •

What a year this has been. Last year was a pretty terrible year for me personally and I was so ready for 2016. I was expecting a much better year, but I didn’t expect this!!!

Less than two weeks ago, I signed a lease on my new office space. It has been dream of mine, to get out of my home office, for such a long time but I have been so afraid to take the leap. With a HUGE nudge from my husband, I finally took jumped off the ledge and did it!

My space is located at 1642 Pleasure House Rd. Suite 108, Virginia Beach. The downstairs space is Synergy Space, an amazing multi-use space that can be rented for multiple different uses (parties, classes, networking, meetings, etc) and the upstairs space is ALL MINE!

It’s not a huge space, I’ll shoot newborns and professional portraits/headshots here, but I’ll still rent my other studio space for larger studio work. It is an AMAZING space though to work, edit, meet with clients and have my viewing sessions!

It’s been a long two weeks getting it ready and I am SO THANKFUL to everyone who helped me. Jeris at Smartgiraffe (www.smartgiraffecs.com) was amazing at helping me get my computer up and running and a new screen projector installed and working. My friends were amazing and stepped up helping me paint, decorate, rewrite and organize. My husband Brett did a majority of the work while I was out of town and did all the heavy lifting! I may run this business alone, but I am SO VERY thankful to those who lift me up and surround me with support.

Here is a progression of our before and after images!!

My Olivia helping put up my curtains and touch up all the paint!

My handsome bandyman. I wouldn’t be here without his support and encouragement!

ALL DONE!!! A few little tweaks here and there BUT I’m officially open for business!!!

Soon, I’ll be announcing my open house date and I can’t wait to celebrate with you as I embark on this new adventure… but don’t feel you need to wait. I’d love it if you’d stop by and say hello. I love visitors!