For photography, it’s now about keeping it real

One would be hard-pressed to find any fake snow backgrounds or rubber ducks at the new Whippersnappers photo studio in Keller, but a bowl full of lifelike cherries? Absolutely.

Studio owner Jennifer Byrdsong said props will likely be cropped out of the photos her studio produces, but they are there to elicit reactions from young children so photographers can snap candid shots – the most in-demand type of photo today.

“Our photographers are all moms and they know no posing, no cheesy smiles, no horrific background where there’s fake snow and fake trees. It’s all about emotion,” Byrdsong said. “We do use props, but it’s props to elicit emotion so we’ll give a baby a bowl of cherries – fake cherries, of course – and just the looks on the face, the smile and all that creativity, it’s personality infused photography. Posing is something you may have to do from time to time, but it’s not what people want.”

Several local photographers and industry experts agree – adding that advancements in technology have made a noticeable impact on the industry and the types of portrait photos people want.

Richard Lane, assistant professor of photography at the Texas Christian University School of Art, said social media outlets such as Facebook have had an impact on the photo industry for the past few years, and photo teachers are talking about the trend amongst themselves.

“It’s not really affecting the way we’re teaching photography, but we do address it,” Lane said. “We tend to think of Facebook as having become like the new family photo album, so people are sharing photos about their lives the way we used to through family photo albums. It’s definitely out there and it’s a teaching point for us as a change in how people are sharing their photos.”

And for portrait photographers, that trend can be a scary one.

According to a Facebook release in April, the site receives 2,000 photo uploads a second, which is 40 million a day and more than 1 billion per month, making it the largest photo sharing service in the world.

The sheer size of the outlet can make it a game changer in the photo industry, Lane said. Though the types of photos uploaded to sites such as Facebook are a far cry from the quality a professional photographer can lend, the candid shots are becoming “quite popular,” he said.

Byrdsong, who opened Whippersnappers, a new franchise location at 101 Town Center Lane in Keller, with her husband Maurice Byrdsong, said the new trend is the reason her studio focuses on candid shots and offers a CD of all session photos with any studio package.

“I think it mirrors reality TV shows. Now people want reality. It’s going through our society,” she said. “Everything is ‘in the moment,’ on Facebook, right now. As a parent, I spent a lot of money going to other studios to have photos taken and you couldn’t share them on Facebook. You couldn’t do anything with them but frame them. But I think the industry is realizing that people want to share photos on Facebook with friends and to do that, they need CDs.”

Brandon Trull, photographer and owner of Perry Aslyn Photography in Fort Worth, agreed, adding that candid shots are “where the industry is going.”

“A lot of it has to do with people getting their own digital cameras, capturing their own moments,” he said. “When my mom whips out my album, all the pictures that were professionally done with the fake bookshelves are in the back. The ones she shows are the Polaroids, the real life.”

Trull said he addresses clients’ desires to capture ‘real life’ by finding public spaces “where families are comfortable, so I can capture where they are at that moment,” he said.

“A lot of the clients who come in, one of the first things they say is, ‘I don’t want it posed.’ Two years ago it started going that way. First they would say they wanted half traditional and half candids, but now they don’t want any posed at all,” he said. “… I don’t know if it’s all because of social media, or just all technology. A few years ago, you had to go to Walgreens or Wal-Mart to develop your film and then scan it so you could send it, but now everybody’s got a camera phone and they can take pictures and send them instantly.”

Wedding photography is seeing the same vein of the trend, according to Leo Wesson, a Fort Worth-based freelance photographer who shoots at area weddings.

“I’ve had a few clients who don’t want to do any posed photography, but it’s no longer the emphasis. It’s just a small part of the package,” he said.

Wesson said the term to describe what many brides are requesting these days is ‘journalistic’ or ‘documentary’ style photography, meaning the wedding is treated more like an event with event coverage.

“They want shots of life and what’s happening at the wedding when they’re not there since they don’t get to see everything that’s happening,” Wesson said.

Wesson said the photo industry is doing what any would in the midst of a shift – answering the trend by offering products that harness the new technology.

Traditionally, Wesson said most brides buy a leather-bound photo album and order prints from their photographer to fill the book, which can be costly, he said. But now, Wesson advises brides to order photo albums from online sources.

“It’s more inexpensive for them and that way it’s available to any member of their family who wants one,” he said.

Trull has started offering a similar product at his studio called ‘A year in the life of,’ which serves as a documentary-style, bound album of the first year of a client’s child’s life.

“We take photos every three months of the child’s first year and we end with their first birthday party,” Trull said. “That way they get pictures with their favorite toys and at different stages, then at the end, it is bound and looks like a children’s book … It’s something we started about a year ago. It answers that need of capturing them where they are and it’s a way for me to offer something new.”