A San Francisco family photography session - the final images

Three generations of family in San Francisco.

Now that family photography is dominated by color lifestyle photography, black and white photography, and black and white film photography, has started to become unique and special. I like that. I like that I am still offering film. I like that my 20 years of training and expertise has to be distilled into one, two or three rolls of film. I have to get it right. I can’t put the camera on auto and just click away. I have to know what I am doing. I have trained to anticipate the image and the moment.

A specialist processes my film; an artist who has trained for years to perfect her craft, creates my prints which are retouched by a master using a real brush and special dyes that he creates. These prints are museum quality and will last for a very very long time. Although not everyone appreciates this in today’s digital world, I do and my clients who find me through many avenues definitely do.

When I do a proof edit with a client, we sit and look at images together. It comes with your session. It means that I can actually show you what I see and see what you like. Sometimes, I see things in my final images that I didn’t see when I was creating them. And sometimes, clients see things in the images that I don’t see. Usually I am teaching the clients what I like, what I see, how to put prints together to tell a story, how to crop images to make them stronger. It is an education and they love it. Occasionally a client comes along with a beautiful vision and sees their images in a way that I didn’t see. That is like a breath of fresh air for me. This happened when working with a San Francisco family.

Many of these triptychs I would have come up with. But several were all Christy and I love them and they work. And after 15 years of doing San Francisco family photography, I love saying that I saw something that I wouldn’t have seen. And I love that!