I’ve known this family for years and was very excited when I heard that they were pregnant. It is truly amazing the way God choses to bless families. Having a child or another child changes many things for parents, but to me it shows the truth of God’s love for us.

Let me introduce Miss Kinley to you.
She was wide awake at the beginning of the session, but was very cooperative.

Isn’t she just the cutest little baby you have ever seen?

I just love these with her big sister. Can you feel the love?

And I’m a sucker for daddy-daughter photos.

I love her facial expression in this photograph. Do you think she is going to be a ‘daddy’s girl’?

And finally we have a new Lil’ Vol.
Mommy and Daddy are big University of Tennessee Volunteers fans and I just love the way these turned out.

I hope you enjoyed these photographs.

Here are some photos from a session that I did with the Mullens at the end of June.  Jayson is a fellow photographer in Lenoir City. As photographers, we have an habit of not getting portraits done, so I love it when I can provide this service to other photographers.

I had a blast photographing Jayson and his beautiful family.  They have a wonderful baby boy and you can tell they love one another.  It’s always a joy to photograph a family that truly loves being together.

Enjoy the photos!

I love the look of a baby’s hands and feet and all their little body parts.  They seem so fragile and innocent as babies.

This is one beautiful family.
Madison is a beautiful girl and a great helper to her mommy. She is going to be a wonderful big sister.

I love the opportunities I get to share these wonderful moments with families. It amazes me how quickly children grow up and what they learn to do and say at young ages. My daughter recently turned 2 and it surprises me on a daily basis the understanding that she has and the phrases that she picks up.

Remember to capture those moments and get those images printed.

This shootout was so much fun. It was challenging to have only a few minutes to place, pose and photograph the model. But it was a great way to learn and to expand my skills.

Here are my photographs from the shootout.

Thanks again to Studio317 and Cappiello Real Estate.

The photographic art you choose to place on your wall is ultimately the result of the vision of the photographer. This vision, coupled with what you wear to your session, the environment, the lighting, even the mood the subjects are in at the time of photographing creates the work that you will want to proudly display on your walls forevermore.

Your first step in the process is more about determining who you are, who your family is and then seeking a photographer that reflects your style. For instance let’s say your family is extremely outdoorsy and loves playing on the beach. You start determining what style you like, browse through photography website portfolios and determine if any of the styles exhibited there would be a good fit with your life and family style. You have already determined that you should probably seek out a beach type photographer (that is if you live near a beach) and then begin narrowing the field down a bit.

Finally after a bit of internet research, you have narrowed it down to two photographers who do what seems like solid work, the sort of outdoor beach look you desire. It is now time to ask yourself: Do you like photographer A’s style over photographer B’s style? Is it because the people in the images of A’s style are having a great time and it seems very caught up in the moment vs. B photographer more posed, looking in the camera images? If this is a case, you probably like LIFESTYLE photography or perhaps even take it a step further and define your desired style as a PHOTOJOURNALISTIC photography style. The photographer you probably should choose is photographer A because their style is very similar to the style you desire.

What custom photography ultimately is all about is choice and experience. Custom photography is about finding someone who will photograph your family, give you devoted 1:1 attention without worry of who is next ‘in line’ or the feeling of a crowded portrait studio. A custom photographer will typically show you a fairly extensive gallery culled to only show the good images that meet the photographers’ creative sensibilities. Often the images are fully edited images-color corrected with blemishes and undereye circles removed. Custom photographers are also known as boutique studios, offering a range of products and unparalleled service. Think Lexus vs. Hyundai, think Nordstrom vs. WalMart.

A custom photography experience should have you, the client and your experience in mind.

Why Choose Custom Photography

Custom Photography as something “special”

Custom photography is more of a luxury than your entry level cookie cutter chain experience. Custom photography truly is not for everyone, it requires a level of commitment, investment in time and money, forethought and planning on the part of the subject/client and requires a larger time commitment for the photographer as well.

Clients who enjoy taking a more active role in the creation of their families’ memories have the desire to have portrait art that is truly personalized. These more discerning clients have been known to budget and allot time for a custom photography session. Many clients opt for it to be a once a year special experience, some opt to have custom photography sessions done to record their child’s stages in life. Having said this, it is clear that custom photography is not in everyone’s budget, it is something that most families save for to splurge on from time to time to memorialize their children as they really are (not posed and primped in the cookie cutter studio setting).

There is a great deal of time involved in creating high end custom photography sessions for a client. The luxury of great service, better choices and a supberb end product. The result of all this are heirloom quality images. The time invested at the session is only a small portion of time involved in this process.

Custom photography has been likened to purchasing a fine vehicle. To get to point B from A let’s face it, even a bus ride would suffice. If you want to luxuriate in a finely appointed vehicle, customizing your own experience by listening to smooth jazz while sitting in a climate controlled setting adjusted purely for your comfort in a body hugging leather interior, perhaps that Lexus you so desire is your cup of tea. Custom photography is much the same cup of tea. It is the Lexus of the photography world. It is where the intangibles make the experience truly wonderful and the images themselves make the investment of money and time truly worthwhile.

Custom photography can be broken down into even more levels. There are on location, studio, mixed studio/on location, specialty location and destination type photographers. The beauty of custom photography is in the choices and in the luxury of thoses options. The customized service level you are sure to experience will be amazing. The knowledge that your final images are the result of someone caring about those moments so much that they take extra time ensuring that the artwork you receive is good enough to stand by with their name on it. That level of quality and commitment is all but lost in the age of “mass produced,” “mass marketed,” corporate “everyone is a number”. Custom photography is based on being unique to you. How great an experience would be, to be able to sit back and allow a photographer to do this highly custom work for images that you will most likely cherish for a lifetime?

Keep in mind more than anything that the Lexus will never appreciate in value the way your portraits will. The portrait art you become invested in from your custom photographer will no doubt increase in value and become more priceless as the years pass.

Thanks to Marianne Drenthe of Professional Child Photographer Consumer Guide for providing this great resource.

So I decided to try and capture a few of these things in portraits. While I believe that I captured her love of books during the photo session, it was really hard to capture her love of dancing and singing.  I hope these portraits of my daughter make you smile.

Make sure you take time to capture these fleeting moments with your family.

Let me know if I can help you create memorable portraits for your family.

So I encourage you to spend as much time with your family as you can and make all the time with them as special as possible.

And what is a post without pictures.

Emma cooking with her mommy.

Trying to figure out this whisk thing.

All the ingredients gathered.

Ingredients are together, ready to be mixed.

Emma trying out one of these fake eggs.

Now what are we supposed to mix together?

Everything is mixed, ready for the next step.

Yummy cookie dough, ready to be rolled flat.

Mommy, my bowl seems to be empty.

Let the rolling commence.

This is fun. Cutting out stars.

Trees and stars. These look good.

Sprinkles are fun.

Pretty Christmas trees.

Why can’t we eat them yet?

There cooking. Almost ready to be eaten.

Looking good. Cooling off so we can eat them.

Pretty stars and trees.

Yippee! I finally get one.

How do you bite this cookie?

This is so good. ‘Tank you mommy’

Thanks for sharing in our holiday fun.  Hope you had a great Christmas with your family.  Look for new things to come from Jarman Photography in the new year.

I was blessed by the families that we had the honor and opportunity to photograph today.  Today wasn’t about the photographers, it was about the people who came to get photographed. We had the chance to meet a young man (13 years old) who was in remission of leukemia for three years. This young man had such a great spirit about him and wanted to get a photograph with his parents, but especially his father. The family traveled for an hour to come get their portraits made. I have a hard time putting into words the experiences I had today.

I hope that everyone takes time in this season of giving to find a way to fill a need in their community. It will bless you and the one you help in ways that you cannot imagine.

Here are the people that participated in the Knoxville Event.

First up in this session was Tim & Carla and their 2 daughters.

Tim, Carla, Hannah, and Micah were such a joy to photograph. We had a blast joking around and laughing together.

I will admit I was a little nervous on this session. Tim is an elder at my church and is someone I respect. So you can understand my nerves. But I shouldn’t have worried, we had a blast and got some great photos.

Next door to this farm was an open field with an old gate in between. I love it when there are items that lend themselves to the photographs around the area. It makes my job so much easier.

The next family is one that I have had the wonderful opportunity to photograph on a couple of occasions. Check out their previous session. I have really enjoyed getting to know this family better through photographing them and attending church and lifegroup together.

The boys were so well behaved and were ready to be photographed when they got there.

Steven and Amber have two great boys and it’s so much fun watching these boys grow up.

We were lucky to get them both to sit down and stay still for just a minute. But you can tell that Zachary loves his little brother.

Zachary liked the old barbed wire fence that separated the tree farm from the field.

And not to be outdone by his older brother, Luke wanted to stand by the fence also.

Thank you Tim, Carla, Hannah, Micah, Steven, Amber, Zachary, and Luke for letting me photograph you.

- Kortney