Barbara Montgomery Portraits

Carson Thomas and his mom, Amy, first came to me for pictures when he was three-months-old.  TomTom, as he is now called, has four brothers and sisters!  His mom wanted to be sure that he was photographed as often as his siblings, so he has been a regular in my studio since then.  His sister, Claire, came in with him for pictures when he was 6-months-old.  TomTom was nine-months-old in the portrait to the right.  I love being able to document the changes that occur in a little one’s first year.  In no other year do you see so much learning, new skills and changes in appearance.  As Amy knows, the time slips away if you don’t put things on the calendar and plan!  I wish someone had impressed that upon me…I have more photographs of Tomtom in his first year than I do of my third child, Claire!

Well, blogging is certainly a new thing for me.  My hope is to share with you my love of portrait photography and how I have come to be the photographer that I am.  An artist is constantly evolving, or should be, and I expect that this blog will show a further evolution of my art as I share with you my favorite photographs from current sessions.  And talk about how the photographs came to be.  I hope you will share your thoughts and suggestions with me, also.

I get a lot of my ideas from you.  A few years ago, a mom asked me if I would photograph her son outdoors after we finished our session in the studio.  I was hesitant because I had come to see myself as a studio photographer only and was concerned about my perceived lack of control of all the variables outside.
When I had been asked the same question by others, I always said no, that I liked to focus on the person only and that all the stuff outside would serve as visual distractions.
But I had come to know this mom through the years and felt uncomfortable not trying to honor her request.

So we went outside and now about half of my sessions include outside pictures.  Thanks, Melissa, for taking me outside my comfort zone!  I rediscovered the joy of shooting with natural light, which is the way I learned to shoot pictures in the first place.

I spent my first dozen years in photography as a photojournalist, first at the Palm Beach Post in Florida and then at The Courier-Journal in Louisville.  I won numerous national awards for my work at both newspapers and have photographed three presidents.  I’ll bet that not many children’s photographers in Louisville have been screened multiple times by the Secret Service!

These were the good old days when we photographed with black and white film which we later processed by hand. Because newspaper editors are notoriously in a hurry, there was rarely time to make a proof sheet to edit from.  So I learned to edit my pictures from negatives on a light table, sometimes not even waiting for the film to completely dry.

I loved the control I had in printing my own pictures and learned a lot about managing light and shadow in an image.

Funny thing, but back then I rarely made use of artificial light.  I hated studio work because I couldn’t see exactly what the light was doing.  And I was intimidated by all the lighting equipment.

Every year, during my work evaluation meeting, I would be asked what goals I had for the future and what aspect of my career I wanted to improve upon. And every year I said the same thing…studio work.  But it wasn’t until after I left the newspaper that I learned how to use light in a studio.

But I’m getting ahead of myself…