When it's all you have, make it special.

Mary Lou bought a new phone last week, and one of the first things she did with it was photograph her son’s National Honor Society induction. She forgot her camera, but she was able to get (pretty good) photos of her son anyway.

It’s hard to remember a time without camera phones, and it’s too easy to take advantage of being able to take a photo whenever you want. This wasn’t always the case. Your parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents only took photos for truly special occasions, if at all.

We can’t count the number of times we’ve heard, “This is the only picture we have of (insert name here).” It’s sad to hear that, but it is also special because we know that we’re about to work on something memorable.

We recently worked on this piece for a client. He only had a few photos of his parents and none of the photos had his parents together. Our client wanted to restore the photos and frame them in a way that signified their importance to him and his family.

The photos weren’t in great condition and needed a fair amount of restoration love. Mary Lou gave the images the same brown tone so that they matched side by side.

Mary Lou wrote his parents’ names in calligraphy under their photos, and Amy drew a line of French matting around the photos and calligraphy to tie everything together. We used a simple champagne fleur de lis frame to add a touch of elegance to the piece. The final frame is gorgeous and delicate. Our client had an identical frame made for each of his children.

The same client wanted his mother isolated from a group panoramic and colorized. He worked with Mary Lou to pick the best colors for her sari. The vignette around her photo gives it a portraits effect and hides the fact that she was extracted from a large group photo. The result is beautiful and understated.