A New Bride, A New Trend!

Today's modern bride is stepping out beyond tradition and embracing a new trend in wedding photography. You may or may not have heard of the up and coming modern trend....
"Trash the dress." As fashion and brides evolve over time, so does the evolution of what is tradition. The large majority of brides are making the choice to not wear their mother or grandmother's wedding dress for various reasons. Because of this change in tradition, today's bride is asking herself, "What will I do with my wedding dress when my wedding day is over?"

We at Paul Douglas Studio have seen an increasing popularity amongst our bride's to allow us, their photographer, to create amazingly, stunning portraits of them in their dress in a very unconventional way. These images are great wall portraits and are included in her custom designed wedding album.

Here is an example of our most recent trash the dress shoot.

Friends Don't Let "True"Friends Get *Traditional* Senior Portraits!

One tradition that is synonymous with entering your senior year is "Senior Portraits". At Paul Douglas Studio we have taken this opportunity to evolve the senior picture tradition into an experience that allows our senior clients a full "fashion/personality/individualized shoot". We provide a free consultation with our senior client. We choose wardrobe options and we spend the time to get to know a little bit about them and what makes them unique and different from everyone else. After our consultation and the defining of one's style, we research the locations that will be used to create a mood and a backdrop that represents our senior client. We also take this opportunity to create a "Concept" portrait. A "Concept" portrait is a unique, timeless, artistic, one of a kind portrait that is chosen by PDS and created specifically for our client. Here are a few of our recent examples......

Pettiskirts Are Back!

For the first two decades of the twentieth century, petticoats fell out of fashion.
Then, in the 1920's chiffon dresses with several sheer petticoats layered underneath became, yet again, fashionable . With the Great Depression in the 1930's, WWII with it's rationing and general shortage of materials, brought an end to the petticoat once again.

The year 2009.... Although the traditional purpose for the petticoat is no longer in fashion, the general decision, with minor alterations, including ripping and/ or usage of bright or non-traditional colors, are back in style .
We, at Paul Douglas Studio, have colorful pettiskirts available and ready for you to photograph your infant, toddler, or tween in them.

Custom Photo Cover Coffee Table Books

We are now offering a new and exciting product for our clients.

Do to the overwhelming and wonderful repeat business from our existing clients, we are challenged to look for quality and creative options on how to display the variety of artistic images that we provide to each of our clients.
These options need to be appealing to our customers and at the same time the products that we offer need to represent the image that our studio is striving to portray.

Every photo session that we shoot we create a variety of custom designed, large print options for our clients to choose from.
Because we have received such an incredible response to our unique, customized, large prints we realized that we need to provide another way for our clients to present and display their portrait selection from their photo session. So, we now offer a Custom cover coffee table book for our clients as a new and exciting option.
This book is designed especially for you, by us. The book has a custom designed photo cover and will incorporate the images that have been processed and created just for you.
This book will allow you the convenience and portability to share your images with your friends and family and you will have a keepsake that will last a lifetime. Here are a few example pages.

Dare to be rare

written by: Karen Belmondo
Over the past couple of years I have seen an increase in women who are asking themselves......Why shouldn't I be photographed at this time of my life?

When you were born your parent's probably took pictures of you and they proudly shared your pictures with everyone. For thirteen years you were photographed and published in the school yearbook and you probably had your senior pictures done professionally. Now you find a mate and you start to "document" yourself with the one you love and eventually when you get married you have your pictures taken with your spouse on your special day.
If you are in any way like me, you now enter into motherhood and the cycle starts all over again with photographing your new family. You find yourself getting involved in everyone else's life and activities and little by little you lose your identity as a woman. You find yourself waking up and looking in the mirror and you realize that time is marching on and we, as women, are not getting any younger, but are a lot wiser and at a point in our lives where we have made both personal and professional accomplishments.

So, why aren't we making the decision to "catalog" this amazing time in our lives? Why are we so afraid? Why do we feel we are not beautiful enough to document the prime of our lives for future generations to come or just for ourselves?



"The rarest thing in the world is a woman who is pleased with photographs of herself."
-Elizabeth Metcalf-

Not your typical senior portrait!

Another award winning senior portrait. This portrait named "Nocturnal Jester" was also entered this past weekend into the PPSNYS print competition held in Albany ,NY at the Desmond Hotel and Conference Center. This print also received the Distinguished Blue Ribbon of Honor along with a "Court of Honors award. Our senior model had no idea as to what was happening to her, but she was willing to go along with our vision for a non-traditional portrait. We provided her with the clothes and make-up but she provided us with the perfect pose and attitude needed to pull a picture like this off. Thanks again to our amazing senior model! Another great, fun, senior shoot and some awesome portraits to go with it. Enjoy them, we do.

A 2009 Senior girl 's portrait receives award

A long, cold day shooting in the alley way in Brocton, NY creates an award winning image.
"Door Belle" was entered into the PPSNY print competition in Albany,NY this past weekend.
The portrait received a Distinguished Blue ribbon of Honor also the "Court of Honor". We thoroughly enjoyed our shooting day and would like to thank our senior girl for allowing us the time it took to achieve this amazing portrait that we love.