This review is coming long after we actually did this, but I didn’t want to pass the opportunity to go into some detail about our great experience getting some pictures with our friends at Wayfarer Studio Photography. Jen and Isaac Marshall, original Pacific Northwesterners, have taken their passion for telling stories in beautiful detail through pictures and turned it into their way of living. As “not Jen or Isaac”, I think what happened to them can be explained as “Through traveling the world, we’ve seen amazing places and met incredible people with powerful stories to tell and feelings to express. Our work is to shoot so others can see it more than once”. This is what I think might go through their heads when they take pictures.
I had been talking to Jen about having our pictures taken on our 5 year anniversary for a number of years by the time we actually did it. Nothing went according to plan, but as good teachers that understand flexibility, they made us feel incredibly comfortable, and somehow, I think captured perfectly what this team is about, and how we feel about each other.
The Marshalls don’t really do “posey” pictures, thank goodness. Your job during one of their shoots is just to have fun and enjoy yourselves. Sure, there might be some light direction because as experts they understand angles and work with the outside elements to get wonderful shots, but mostly, you’re just hanging out and they experiment a little. I can say their experiments, while a bit funny at the moment, are absolutely trustworthy. Jen and Isaac are experts at capturing nature and making it the star of your pictures, while still showing what you and your family are about at that time.
The most important, and touching, aspect of these pictures to me was how happy they managed to portray us in pictures. Sometimes, we know we are happy, and we feel happy, but we might not be sure how it might look to others (not that it matters exactly), but somehow I was very surprised to see how much I was laughing, how at ease I looked, and how comfortable we are with each other. One of the things the Marshalls highly encourage their clients to do is to print their pictures so they can look at them often (we really don’t do that as much in a time and age when we have the capacity to take so many pictures and have each of them turn out pretty great). I love looking at these pictures. These are pictures I am looking forward to revisiting for years to come – that time when two kids had their friends take their pictures in a place that makes them incredibly happy.
You can read the photographers’ chronicle of this session here.
What you need to know:
- Jen and Isaac travel anywhere in the world – kids and everything (their kids are hilarious and super cool anyway – it’s a treat to have them around!). So if you live in Asia, or the Middle East, or Europe, or Latin America, or Australia, or anywhere, it doesn’t matter. They’ll go and take your pictures. Jen was seven (almost 8) months pregnant when they did our shoot. That kind of thing doesn’t stop them!
- Super easygoing – again, if you want a photographer that will make you feel comfortable and not do the posey awkward family photos, these are your peeps. My husband and I are super introverts who don’t really like to have their picture taken, and we LOVE our pictures.
- Easy, very high-quality print options – including possible decoration options and placement for your prints at your home the way it is now. Their frames are also very lightweight and easy to pack.
- You’re not just an account number to the Marshalls. Again, this is quite literally a family business. Jen and Isaac are their own staff – the same people that take your pictures will do the editing and the design consulting and prepare the print delivery.
I’m not writing this for any type of gain. Sure, if our friends got a wedding or a family shoot out of this, that would be incredible. This is mainly out of a motivation to tell people about others who do great work and care about what they do. In a world of impersonal, obscenely large corporations, we should spread the love of wonderful small businesses when we find them.
You can see more of the Marshalls’ beautiful photography/storytelling at their Wayfarer Studio Instagram page.