United We Stand at Neal Urban Studio

United We Stand at Neal Urban Studio

We offered a mini session called United We Stand for people serving or have served our country. We encouraged families to bring in uniforms, photos, awards, or any other memorabilia to incorporate in the images. Our set was just a ship lap wall (we made for Spring Mini's), and a giant American Flag.

This gentleman was in the Police Force. He had such a great look to him when we were posing him in the United We Stand set. There was something about the way he photographed we really liked. We had a little time before our next family was to arrive and decided to do some portraits in our "other" set. The scene you see here was built for our annual "Photos for Toys" Christmas photos. We had not built something different in that part of Neal Urban Studio yet. We brought over the American Flag(the one hanging), then we added another flag and chest. We placed his police hat on the fire place too. It took two seconds for us to put this together for him and we loved the way it was looking.

All we needed was for him to sit on a chair. We had giant windows in our Studio and there were no blinds or curtains to close. We always had natural light come in, but not always at the times of day for sessions. It was actually a little too bright that day. We did not want this image to look that way. Only enough to see him and the few props we had in there. We used giant bounce boards and folding boards to block out the light. We played around with them and moved them until we got the lighting just right. This was the final look we wanted to create. This family loved it!

We were so happy to be able to do this for those who have served, are serving, or have/had family members that did serve our Country. We owe so much to these men and women who risk their lives everyday to make our country a great place to live. We thank them and hope we are able to do something like this again in the future.

Location: Buffalo NY.