Spring is officially here and it’s time for family portraits. But sometimes people want something different, unique, something that they can feature in their home as an art piece and be proud of. For those clients, I offer custom painted portraits, painted from the family groups I create during your session.
I have photographed Janet’s extended family before, but this time they wanted something different. So while they were on vacation in Utah, I drove up the mountains and met up with them and photographed each family in some tall grass near their vacation property. I shot a variety of options with the families looking at the camera, and some of them interacting with each other that I could use to create paintings. Here are some of those finished paintings. They look amazing up close when they’re finished on canvas.
And here are some of the other groupings, starting with the biggest extended family group, and then each family separately. I love the diversity of location options in Utah. With a little bit of scouting and some custom lighting, I was able to make this location work right outside their vacation home. By me coming to them, I was able to integrate a location into their images that meant something to them, plus it saved them vacation time so that they could quickly get back to their time together.
And of course I love to focus in on children and do just some individuals. Rather than show every child’s individual portrait, here are some from just one family.
And for every single shoot I do – whether it’s in my studio, outside in my Utah studio gardens, or off on location as this shoot was – I really hope that my clients see the quality and value that I offer. I work to mix into every single image a combination of emotional impact and fantastic lighting. I want both, real expressions that draw you in mixed with all the technical details nailed.
I know it’s time for YOUR updated family portrait. Give me a call and let’s get it scheduled. 801-728-3317
It was a rare opportunity to get all of Janae’s family in town together. So during this short window when everyone was in Utah, they came in for some new studio family portraits. And one of my personal favorite parts of creating family portraits is to connect with the children. I am not satisfied with kids just looking my direction or into the camera, and I don’t want cheesy, fake, or rehearsed smiles. I want them to really shine. I want a family grouping that is well composed, beautifully lit, where everyone (including the tiny kids) all look real and amazing. And I am really glad with how this turned out.
And with all family portrait sessions, I also like to photograph individual families. These final options were printed as 4 large squares and custom framed to match so that they could all hang together on Janae’s wall as a beautiful series. Notice how great everyone looks, especially the children.
And this last image is just a fun grouping of the original family. Portraits like this are great to show love and togetherness even though we all change.
March is a great time to get in for some family portraits, and I have a promo going right now. Give me a call at 801-728-3317 and let’s discuss creating something new for you.
My friend Trish recently passed away of cancer and today is her funeral. As a tribute, I thought I’d post a few pictures that I did of her over the years. She was always a good friend, and years ago before she was married I would go boating with her and my friend Chad. They both taught me to wakeboard and boat surf. Some time later in 2008, she got engaged and I photographed her wedding. For a few years after that I also photographed her family for her Christmas cards.
Here are some of my favorite images that I shot of her over the years, starting with her engagement portraits.
Some of her wedding images…
And some of her family portraits for her Christmas cards, in her home. The portrait on her mantle is one of her wedding images.
Here is a link to her obituary for those interested. I’m grateful to have known her, to have so many fond memories of her, and to have been able to create these photographs of her that I hope are kept and cherished by her loved ones for years to come. I wish her family and loved ones my deepest condolences.
Family portraits are incredibly fulfilling for me to create. A well-made family wall portrait brings joy to people for years if not decades. And Shirley’s family had grown quite a bit since I’d last photographed them. It was neat to see everyone, to hear about their lives as I photographed them, and I always find it especially fun to get little children to not just relax, but to smile and laugh for a portrait.
We had talked earlier about doing a large canvas panorama of her family above her couch, and this is the final image.
It’s a little hard to see all the great faces online, so I made this 15 second video to show the big group.
Because Shirley and her husband were leaving on a religious mission for a while out of the country, the large canvas pano would have been hard to take with them. So I used the individual family groups to create this square wall collage.
And here are some of the individual families. They were each shot individually for the panorama so that they could each get their own portrait, but it also made it easier on the family’s time constraints, as well as making the most of my custom style of lighting. I have a lot of space and options here in my Utah studio, but even a family this large makes for a very tight fit if I were to try and shoot everyone at once all in the studio. But shooting each family separately, we were able to create something much more unique and artistically pleasing, plus it helped the family because there were some members that couldn’t be there all at the same time. Everyone was coming and going throughout the shoot, and we never had everyone in the studio all at the same time. And it all worked perfectly.
As you view these families, notice how comfortably everyone is grouped together in each portrait, and how great each kid looks.
Family portraits are one of the most important images we can create. I believe strongly in a great family portrait, and now is a great time to get your family in the studio for a portrait.
Give me a call at 801-728-3317, and until next time, America.
I find it especially fun and rewarding to create family photographs of my relatives. Recently we had a short window of time when JJ and Cherie’s kids would all be together here in Utah. We were able to get a variety of family photographs, and this one was used for their Christmas card.
And spontaneously while doing just the kids’ photographs, they began doing the Arrested Development chicken dance as we laughed. It made for a great back of the card.
I love this family, and Christmas time, and the chance to make them their Christmas cards. I hope everyone everywhere has a very Merry Christmas.
Family portraits are important and meaningful, especially when children are young because they change so fast. It’s wonderful to be able to have a custom art piece on the wall that you can enjoy, not only right now, but also in 20 years.
And for my clients that are looking for something completely different, I offer my special line of painted family portraits. This is not some quick filter or effect. Instead I individually paint each image from scratch using a photograph that I create during your portrait session. It’s a lengthy creative process, but I created this sped up video so that you can see it come to life in a short 15 second time-lapse video.
That finished painting is now hanging as a beautiful canvas in their home. During the creation as I was photographing the family, their dog ran around behind them, came around the side and looked up at them. For one split second everything was perfect, and I quickly got that shot. Everyone is looking at each other and interacting including their beloved dog that really wanted to be a part of the moment.
With summer ending, this is the last great time to photograph families that want outdoor images. The studio gardens look amazing right now, and the colors are green and lush. We can do a variety of family options and groupings for a lot of choices. And though no one likes to think about Christmas early, the weather is starting to get cooler which means outdoor options will become limited, plus we only have about 14 Saturdays left to get things by Christmas.
Besides family groups, it’s always nice to get an updated couple portrait. I’m amazed how many couples I photograph admit that they have not had a professional couple portrait since their wedding. Let’s fix that and get you something you can put on your desk at work or display around your home.
Here at my Utah studio, we can shoot outdoors and indoors during the same appointment. For Angie’s family, we went in the studio for some fun, high-contrast black and whites of individuals that could be displayed as a series of squares going up the stairs.
And those squares worked really well as this framed trio too.
Let’s get some great portraits of your family inside the studio and outdoors in the gardens while the weather is still nice. Now is the perfect time to get in and beat the Christmas rush of fall.
Give me a call at 801-728-3317 and until next time, America.
I recently posted on Facebook about installing this large 7×4 foot portrait, and included with a few images of me hanging it. I received a bigger response than usual, 260+ likes, 30+ comments, and private messages from people asking how I did it. So I thought it’d make a great blog post.
Here I am hanging the portrait with a couple large Little Giant ladders that still were’t quite tall enough.
Bry Cox hanging a beautiful 7’x4′ family portrait in this beautiful home. The size of a photograph should fit the space properly.
And here is the portrait so you can see the details better. This family had grown quite a bit with married kids and lots of cute new grandkids. So when they hired me, they wanted to make sure that they could see everyone’s faces and could enjoy the image from the given viewing distance of the room.
The day of the shoot was cold and rainy but I still wanted to create the image outside. Yes, they have a large home and we could have set up in a room somewhere, or I could have even set up a studio in their gym, but I always emphasize my specialty of lighting and emotion, and I knew I could create something with more drama outside in front of their home. And yes, we could have rescheduled for a pretty, sunny day, but I don’t like to reschedule for lots of reasons.
One, many times like this, it’s the only day when family is all in town. Two, sometimes rescheduling means the portrait is never created. And three, rain makes for really beautiful and saturated colors when custom lighting is handled the right way. Plus after 20+ years of creating photographs full time for clients I know that I can work within the cycles of a rain storm as it goes from a big downpour to a slow drizzle to hard rain again.
The trick is to be all set and shoot quickly when the rain slows down so that I’m done before the next wave of hard rain comes again. And that’s what I did. While the family waited in the warmth inside, I set up my lights and camera and had everything metered and ready to go. I kept everything covered until we had a lull in the storm, and then had everyone come outside and we began working.
Storm or not, I pose and position people quickly and in natural stances, then I play with the kids with a puppet routine that I’ve worked up over the years. I love it when even the tiniest kids, babies really that can’t even talk are laughing at my puppet show because they know it’s funny.
I started with the largest family group, and moved quickly to individual family groups. I only shoot about 3-5 images per family because I don’t want to wear people out, or exhaust the natural smiles of the children. And on this night we had other reasons to hurry as the rain was starting to get heavy again.
Besides the biggest group I was able to get two other families groups shot before the rain hit hard again, so I moved under the awning that can be seen in the earlier groups. Again, I wanted to stay outside so that all of the family groups would have a uniform look, color scheme, feel, and lighting style. I want them all to look good when hung together and not look like different shoots. So working under the awning was perfect because the clients were able to stay dry (even though I was standing in the rain), and we were able to finish the session so that everything matched and looked beautiful.
I love that this little baby is laughing. In the big family group, she was the kid laughing the loudest at my silly puppet routine.
At some point, no matter how fast you work, kids are spent. They only have so much energy for photos, but it’s still fun to try and get a grandkids photo, even if some are crying. We did one under the awning and then went inside to the fireplace and did one big casual group of the entire family.
Here is a view of their finished portrait in their home. The most common concern with families is getting your portrait too big or too small for where it is hanging. You want to be able to see faces and it is hard to imagine sizes when looking at a price menu. That is why I preview your order on a projector so that you can see your exact image at the exact size you’d like it. And if you know you’re getting over a certain size, I’ll come to your home and will help measure walls so that we get it absolutely perfect. And yes, I’ll even come hang it for you too.
Bry Cox hanging a family portrait. Notice how the size works so well with everything.
Summer is ending and this is a great time to photograph your family. It’s always hard because schedules are crazy, and right now kids are going back to school. But winter is even harder and right now it’s still warm and pretty outside. Give me a call at 801-728-3317 and let’s create something amazing for you.
One of the fun things about being a professional portrait photographer for so many years is being able to see my clients grow and change. Many times I’ll photograph families, then the children’s engagements and weddings, then maternity, then baby portraits, then kids and new family portraits. It’s rewarding to see people come in again and again and see how they change and grow over time. It makes many of my clients feel more like family than customers as I’m a part of some of the big moments in their lives.
This particular family portrait has been a favorite of mine and has been a sample canvas on my wall for years. I’ve done a lot of portraits for them over the years and now the second to youngest son (two in from the left side) who is a young man in this family portrait, is much older and married. His wife recently called me.
They have a beautiful sweet baby that just turned one years old. Her name is Mayzee and she came in for her one-year-old portraits.
She was a joy to photograph and warmed up to me really quickly. She would smile and laugh at me, and was cheerful throughout the entire shoot. Her personality had me laughing most of the time too, and she really responded well to all of my antics.
Here is a wall collage using a b&w family portrait in the middle and two smaller wall images on the sides.
And here are those images bigger.
With her cute clothes and happy personality, we were able to do a variety of backgrounds and options. But no matter what prop I’d bring out to keep her in place and steady on her feet, she really loved my little blue chair the most. She’d push it around like a lawn mower, would sit in it, spin and turn in it, and if I brought out something else, she’d go get the chair and bring it back into the shoot.
For this outfit and background I tried my little leather ottoman, but she quickly pushed it away and brought back the chair, as you can see in this trio design below. Another thing to note is that these photographs in these collages below have had zero retouching and no effects.
My specialty is exquisite lighting and emotion. That means that even before images are retouched that they should have the creative side of great expressions and personality, as well as the technical side of perfect skin tones, smooth skin, and sparkly eyes that pop. I don’t fake those things with software effects, filters, or painting afterwards. And the results are images with more emotional impact that I think people can see whether they’re trained in portrait photography or not.
I really love this shoot and I’m excited to share it with you. There were so many favorites and such a variety of this little girl.
If you would like some baby portraits that capture personality with a focus on emotion and exquisite lighting, then give me a call. 801-728-3317. Let’s talk about how easy a baby portrait shoot really can go.
Christmas is almost here and it’s a great chance to spend time with families. It’s also a great time of year for family portraits while everyone is together, and this year I was honored to create the Governor’s family portraits and Christmas cards. It was a huge project as it also included designing and printing thousands of cards, as well as mailing them all out. Every day for a couple weeks I was working on this job to make it all come together, look great, and hit mailboxes on time.
I really love how it all turned out. I’ve had many clients that were on the Governor’s mailing list already comment to me about how great everything looked and how fun it was to get it. Here is the opening portrait on the card.
I really work hard to make photo shoots quick, fun, and painless. It was nice to hear afterwards that they felt it was the fastest and easiest shoot they had done. Once I get everyone positioned and the lighting just right, I have a very goofy routine that mesmerizes the kids. I shoot what I need, but I don’t wear people out by shooting a ton. When I know we’ve got it, I move on so that expressions don’t get stale and people can get back to their lives.
I really love this big group portrait below. The Herbert family is a very nice and wonderfully big family with a lot of cute, little grandkids. The lighting in this area had to be just right so that the background wouldn’t be dark and black, but instead would be a nice medium warm tone that accentuated but didn’t distract – while at the same time making sure the faces on everyone was dimensional, even, and created great skin tones.
For the card, I cropped it down to a long panorama that you see when you fold open the card.
And usually on the back of cards I just do my logo, but we added this cute group portrait of all the grandkids. There are a lot of great expressions in these cute faces.
Of course we also photographed individual families too while I was there.
I really think it turned out great. It’s also been fun to hear from various clients of mine that have received the card. For instance, here is a sweet mention on Instagram from one of my good clients and friends Shauna Lake of KUTV news. She posted this when she got her card.
Well I hope everyone has a great Christmas and can spend time with family. If you need some great family portraits while people are in town, let me know. 801-728-3317.
And make sure you check out ideas on my main website too, at BryCox.com. Merry Christmas and until next time, America.
One of my favorite things about being a photographer is being able to work with some of the same families again and again. It is fulfilling creating a custom wall portrait that I know they will look at and love for years to come. It’s just another reason why it was great to hear from Pat wanting a new and updated grouping. The last time I photographed her family was in 2003.
It’s amazing how fast time flies and how much children change and grow, and it was really neat to see the original portraits in Pat’s home when I delivered her new and updated wall portrait. Notice how little the parents have changed over the years, but how much the children have grown. Some have gotten married and there are even some little grandkids too.
And below are the kids alone. What I think is interesting, besides how much everyone has changed, is how I analyzed the group of kids both 11 years ago and today. In both cases I looked at the kids and saw a line, and grouped them boy/girl/boy/girl. In fact they are all in the exact same order with the exemption of swapping two girls. And we even did a slim-line crop again too. I love that.
Being a Utah photographer means having lots of locations to to use as backdrops. For the new portraits, we shot up in the canyons and for the original portraits 11 years ago, we photographed in my outdoor studio gardens.
During the new shoot, we also created smaller family groups that we finished as squares. That way they could all be framed and hung in a grouping on the wall together.
It’s amazing how a photograph can stop time, and I love that the value of a photograph only grows over the years. If it’s time for a new and updated family portrait, there’s no better time. I can get things finished for Christmas for you and even get some cards done quickly too.
Give me a call, 801-728-3317 and check out my main portfolio website too at BryCox.com.
Fall weather means family portraits — and also Bry Cox’s family portrait paintings.
When I photograph your family, I can also create a very unique piece of art — a painting. These are actually painted stroke by stroke using the original photograph as a reference so that everything is in proportion. You can save by doing this too as part of the fall special going on now.
Here is a short video of me talking specifically about these paintings…
Remember, my fall special is going on now. All the details are here. Give me a call and let’s create something amazing for you.
Below are some paintings I’ve created for people. These are each finished as a stretched canvas in a variety of sizes, ready for hanging. I am based in Utah and have both an outdoor shooting area here at the studio location, but I also know of great places to go in the canyons and nearby mountains. For example, these first few are on location throughout Utah.
These next few paintings were shot in the studio gardens.
This next one was created at the client’s home.
While these last three were painted from images I created in the studio.
And here is a painting created from a studio portrait for a high school senior session.
And last week on my blog, I shared a family’s painting as a time-lapse animation of it being created. Here is that time-lapse again.
Give me a call at 801-728-3317, and let’s set up your fall appointment and create a fall family painting as well. And check out my main website to view more of my portfolio at BryCox.com.
I love photographing families and creating unique pieces of art for them, and my painting line is definitely unique. Starting with a photo for reference, this painting is created from scratch with no computer filters or quick effects. They are stunning to look at in person, but are hard to describe online, so I created this animation showing some of the steps of how this painting came together over time. It starts out very rough and abstract, and slowly comes together. When I finish the piece, I like to leave a lot of the rough, abstract brush strokes around the edges and throughout the background. It gives it a very etherial look, and makes it hard to mistake it for a photograph. However the faces are always very detailed.
Here’s the final painting.
These paintings are available in a variety of sizes starting at 20 inches, and are perfect for outdoor fall family portraits. Right now is my fall family portrait special. All the details are on the past blog post, but here’s a link. It’s a great time to get in for a shoot while the weather is great, and before the Christmas rush.
And aside from shooting for a painting, together we’ll create some great images of your family during the shoot. I have great options for outdoor portraits at my studio, but this image was created on location at a spot near this family’s home. This family was so nice and fun to work with. The weather was actually very hot during this session, and for most photographers that would mean bright, washed out skies and blotchy sun marks on the skin which means most photographers would probably make the image black and white to hide their problems. But light is my specialty, and I set up some powerful and direct lighting to bring add dimension the family, while at the same time darkening the sky. The result is a beautiful family with warm, beautiful skin tones, lots of spacial dimension, a gorgeous sky with dramatic clouds, and a field full of warm vivid colors.
After the family portrait, I like to focus on the kids. These kids were very smart and funny. I was amazed at the advanced subjects they were studying in school. And I really like the real and natural expressions in each of these images.
Being a Utah based photographer, we have so many options for outdoor locations, especially in the fall. So whether you want a family painting, photographic portrait, or want to shoot inside the studio or outdoors, I know you’ll love what I create for you. Fall is here and it’s a great time to get in. Beat the rush and call me today for the best dates and availability: 801-728-3317
