Since black and white and color photography serve such different purposes when it comes to preserving the moment, I always include both in the galleries I deliver for family and portrait sessions. Color can give context, augment mood, direct focus, and enhance aesthetic appeal. But when it comes to timelessness, black and white is king. Because I aim to deliver images with both classic appeal and a sense of truth, I'll always include color and black and white images, but black and white will remain my favorite.
"I see more in black and white- I like the abstraction of it." Mary Ellen Mark
"When I speak to photographers about why they make black and white images, the conversation often turns to the subject of time. Or rather, timelessness. There is no getting away from the nostalgia and the connection to archive and history that these images have..." Izabela Radwanska-Zhang
If you need someone to help you save your moments with timeless black and white images of your family or loved ones, click the book a session button at the bottom right of the page or email me! I'm here to bring your big and small moments to light... in color AND black and white!
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Sending an announcement that doubles as a Christmas card can be the best way to get your address updated on your friends and family's list for the season. I can come to you and deliver great family portraits to send out ahead of the holiday season with great turn around time. It feels great to get this checked off your to-do list and I promise we will even have fun doing it! Schedule your session today!
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There can be one hundred reasons you want to capture a specific portrait of a specific person at a specific time of life but I'm here to give you just a few:
- you want to display large print of a milestone moment like an upcoming wedding or birthday or event
- the way your person smiles or laughs or grins moves you and you don't want to forget it
- you're not really ready for a full family photo session but you want to document your children at this stage of life
- you know that time flies and things will change and the way they look now will be totally different a year from now and you want to remember
- you love this person and you want to have a visual of the love
- you want to give a gift that will last a lifetime
That's just a few. If you'd like more information, email me at [email protected] or book a session right from my website.
Let's bring this moment to light.
One of my most frequently asked questions for family photography in Shreveport-Bossier is where the session should take place. So here it is- my top five favorite locations in the Northwest Louisiana area for making memories, having fun, and enjoying the beauty of family life:
5. Red River Wildlife Refuge
The RRWR is a beautiful spot off of the Arthur Teague Parkway in Bossier. It is expansive with lots of trails, but for family sessions I usually stick to the areas surrounding the visitor center and the levee. It can get crowded at peak family photography season, but in general this is fairly easy to work around. The zinnias bloom in the summer and the goldenrod is beautiful in the fall.
4. Downtown Shreveport
Options abound in downtown Shreveport! Everything from colorful murals to more neutral structural backdrops invite great compositions for stellar photos. Ending at the riverfront with the massive red rocked water feature is a favorite.
3. The Duck Pond
If you have kids and want a good mix of candid and posed photos, the Duck Pond on East Kings Hwy is the place! The colors are gorgeous in the fall and the still water makes for a great backdrop. Plus, so much nature! Gotta love spotting the pond rats... I mean nutria. :)
2. Betty Virginia Park
Betty Virginia is wildly underrated in my estimation. Maybe because of its familiarity. If you're from Shreveport, you know BVP so well that you don't always see how beautiful it can be, but there are a plethora of benches and stones and hills and grassy areas that make it ideal for family sessions. The stone bridge is a favorite and photographs really well as do the iron benches. In the spring, the azaleas are aplenty and in the fall, the trees really POP OFF. It's my second favorite in all of Shreveport-Bossier.
1. Your home
My tip top favorite is catching families in their most natural environment at their most relaxed. This happens most often this happens at home. No, it does not have to be perfect. In fact, it's better if it's not. The beauty of your life is not in perfection, but in the love that happens in the midst of a sometimes swirling mess. I feel so honored when I'm invited into these sacred spaces.
One thing's for sure - wherever we are, we'll be all there. Present, having fun, playful with a common goal of preserving this fleeting moment in time.
Book a session online or contact me today for more information on the type of sessions I offer! Let's bring your moments to light.
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The intersection of place and story sends us the world over. We gawk at brown historical markers, pointing out what happened where. We're curious and somehow we know that the criss cross of our stories across time and space makes for a very peculiar alchemy of vital progress. Something happened once here. Maybe it will happen again. We're pretty sure things are happening now. Maybe all these details and faces and dates line up to point to an invisible thread connecting us all to cosmic meaning.
The story of a home is especially weighty. Homes are at the center of how things get started and how things end. Homes can give us roots, grounding us, giving us not only a place to belong, but a contextual frame in which our stories play themselves out.
A few months back, I photographed the Calahan family at their historic home in Shreveport on Forest Avenue. They shared the story of this sweet spot on the earth where northwest Louisiana magnolia trees meet Spanish Colonial Revival style stucco and I was rapt.
Way back in the 1920's, then attorney Huey P. Long built this home for his family with the sudden windfall that came his way after winning a case against Commercial National Bank. Desinty Calahan had shown me a photo of Long and his wife and three kids on the porch.
We remade the photo, almost 100 years later. Different family, same house.
Huey P Long, Rose McConnell Long, and their three children sit on the front porch of their Shreveport, Louisiana home in the mid 1920's at their Forest Avenue home. Long was the 40th Governor of Louisiana.
Blaine Calahan, Destiny Calahan, and their three children sit on the front porch of their Shreveport, Louisiana home in the early 2020's at the same home on Forest.
God only knows what tragedy and triumph these walls have seen in the past century. For now, it's filled with happy and charming children, a beautiful family and a lot of life. Roots are growing down as these children grow up. It's the Calahan's turn to give it all a go.
"That you are here—that life exists and identity,That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse."
Walt Whitman
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Congrats and well done to Rocky Rockett of the Greater Bossier Economic Development Foundation. Rockett linked these entities' incentives and financing together to land the deal in Plain Dealing.
I'm currently reading An American Childhood, Annie Dillard's account of growing up in Pennsylvania in the 1950's which triggers a bit of inward groaning in my spirit- both because the book is better than all the other books and because her childhood seems better than all the other childhoods, especially these modern day ones. No longer do children ride bikes all day without checking in with parents, putting pennies on streetcar tracks and finding corners of forests to explore alone. No longer do kids roam unsupervised, screen-less.
I bemoan this.
And yet the magic of the waking that happens in childhood endures. Even now.
Annie again:
"Children ten years old wake up and find themselves here, discover themselves to have been here all along; is this sad? They wake like sleepwalkers, in full stride; they wake like people brought back from cardiac arrest or from drowning: in medias res, surrounded by familiar people and objects, equipped with a hundred skills. They know the neighborhood, they can read and write English, they are old hands at the commonplace mysteries, and yet they feel themselves to have just stepped off the boat, just converged with their bodies, just flown down from a trance, to lodge in an eerily familiar life already well underway.
I woke in bits, like all children, piecemeal over the years. I discovered myself and the world, and forgot them, and discovered them again."
Does this process really end? Do we stop with our waking?
This morning I sat on my back porch and noticed the four part harmony of the morning songbirds, the distant roar of the interstate, the trill of insects, and the hum of our air conditioning unit. A couple of days ago, I explained our health insurance system to my curious 12-year-old. I stood on the geysers of Yellowstone last year and began to understand the immensity of our country's super volcano. Maybe it's just for 10-year-olds, but I don't think so. To the extent that we pay attention, our waking up is ongoing.
Photos: Elise Harper during her family's day-in-the-life session last year. Like Annie Dillard, she inspires.
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What if there was a small town meeting place where people could not only get a world class cup of coffee but also a pep talk?
What if it had space for anyone and everyone to come to gather and sit on porches and visit face to face?
What if it had a dedicated, reservable area for creative thinkers to come together and collaborate over the best caffeinated beverages this world has to offer?
What if it was a new business that would bless and invigorate the surrounding town and communities?
I have a hunch that's what owners Cody Peek and Josh Wiggins were thinking while dreaming up Local Habit Coffee Co. Cody and Josh, with the support and help from their talented wives, have succeeded in opening a top notch coffee shop in the small community of Nash, Texas, on the outskirts of Texarkana. From concept and design, to employee work ethic and culture, to coffee bean quality and barista know-how, no detail was left to chance. Every inch of this place was well thought out and enthusiastically brought to life all the while pointing a finger to "go make something good happen," a tag line that serves as a harbinger of hope.
A certain teenager worked the counter on opening day and by worked, I mean he busted his behind from the crack of dawn to closing time. Sanders Wiggins, son of co-owner Josh Wiggins, is learning first hand what can happen when you have the courage to implement an idea, the dedication to see it through, and the endurance to work hard at the task at hand.
What good can we make happen today?
What can we dream up?
There's no idea too big or too small.
What if?
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When I walked into the atrium of Shreveport's historic Municipal Auditorium the afternoon of the 2022 Cotillion, my jaw dropped. I had been tasked with making a highlight video of the event so I had been running around to other events to catch the action, but nothing prepared me for how fantastical it had all come together that day.
Just wow.
It was the greatest show indeed!
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You know... the stuff of life that really matters. The generations gathered, the feasting and the sense of belonging, the smiles. It's the dyeing Easter eggs with your grandmother- these are the formative things. The things you remember.
The good stuff.
Our wide eyed obsession with brand new humans is a given and understandably so. Wow! Here you are- Earthside! But the halfway through that first year of life, a sneaky sweet spot lingers- but not for long. It's as fleeting as a red leaf in fall so don't miss it. Dimpled hands that find feet to stick in their mouth, a ball of thigh rolls that giggles and coos- this is the stuff, y'all. Save it.
Wearing beautiful smiles themselves, this amazing orthodontic group is poised and ready to take on Shreveport-Bossier's teeth straightening needs. Thanks, Graf Orthodontics for being such an easy and fun group to photograph!
“Here dies another day
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world round me;
And with tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?”
― G.K. Chesterton
What is it like to have a newborn?
It's sleepless nights and cycles of shushing and bodily fluids and exhaustion but mostly... it's pure love.
This is Clarke - still settling in to life earth side.
For newborn sessions, I aim to showcase how it feels. If you feel it, mission accomplished.
Welcome to the world, Clarke! You are loved.
I met Christina and Andy in the spring of 2020 - just before the pandemic hit I do believe. From the get go, they were as bright and beautiful as the sun flare that seemed to follow them wherever they went.
Baby Hadley was born in that window of time where no one was allowed in the hospital because of Covid-19, so we didn't get hospital photos, but I did put on my mask and saved this moment in time from a distance, so careful. I remember it like it was yesterday.
By September at her 4 month session, those big blue eyes were popping and the baby soaking in the tub in the evening light just about undid us, one thousand percent adorable.
Then came the pig tails and oh my... just when I thought it couldn't get any more endearing.
So the photos began and ended at the Red River and it was such a pleasure saving these memories for Christina, Andy, and Hadley. They've headed north already on a new assignment, but I hope they can look back at their time in Louisiana and smile, those memories on the banks of the river preserved and held.
]]>Energetic 11 year old twins? No problem. For this fun crew, I created a scavenger hunt for some downtown Shreveport sites at sunset. By the time we made our two mile loop, we had seen a lot and had plenty of time to capture what I knew we'd see along with what came as bit of a surprise, like the wall inspiring my friend Kristen and I to near tears- the graffitied one about the creative adult.
Another surprise came with the light. In this family shot with the live oaks of the Caddo Parish Courthouse in the background, the sun was actually setting behind me. With the way they were positioned, there was no way this family should be rimmed with light. However, we were in just the right spot at just the right time so that a massive amount of golden light was bouncing off of the Horseshoe Casino from all the way across the river in Bossier City so that it lit them up from behind, wrapping them like the love they share.
Just goes to show you... you never know where you'll find light. Light can show up and surprise you.
So yeah, this session was full of surprises including continued connection and storytelling even after our session had ended. Sometimes I wonder when I'll stop being surprised at all the amazing stories I hear and the ways God connects me with all these incredible families full of courage and strength and HOPE but no... I think I'll always be surprised.
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Flowers are temporal surprises, seasonally showing off, there for the noticing. I've noticed. And these floral heralds of glory have captured my imagination, inviting me to look long. Visit my store for a print- I would love to share what I've captured with you!
gender reveal
Newborn
four months
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Kindness
by Candace Chaney and Kayla Rupp
This story
began when He
thought up our lungs and sound waves and spoke them into existence, singing
the first melody of creation.
The Hallelujah chorus itself
is but a little ditty beside His creation song.
All our Michelin Stars fall
short of the taste of the wedding banquet
of the Lamb.
All our stories,
our Pulitzer Prize winning stories,
are mere shadows of this one.
Redemption.
He walked
on Earth, passing around kindness,
throwing it far and wide,
until it returned to him
like a boomerang to his big, kind heart.
He sat and listened (kindly)
to our stories,
telling all kinds
of stories of his own.
Stories that guided and healed us.
Healed me.
I would have been one
of his broken favorites. He would have eaten
with me
in first century Nazareth,
He would have sat around my fire, tapping his toes.
And yet he still comes
for dinner every night.
His busted up emissaries of grace
come in His place.
For me
to serve hot stew and stories.
To serenade,
As unto the Lord himself.
Hope –
According to the dictionary, hope is a “feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.” According to the Bible, hope is the expectation that God will fulfill His promises…it is a confidence that everything He says is true. Every. Single. Thing.
October 9, 2018
317 days after our sweet Katie Bug died, we “welcomed” our Baby Ethan into this world. Hope looked and felt very different than it did one year earlier. As I look at these pictures two years later, I am brought to tears. I can remember these moments as if they were yesterday and yet, a lifetime ago. In terms of literal time, there are only 2 years between then and now, but in terms of grief and trauma and healing and hurting, it is also a lifetime. These pictures, my first time to meet Candace, were traumatic for me. I was bringing a new baby into a world that can and will hurt him…physically, emotionally, spiritually and everything in between. The brokenness of the world had already killed my daughter…what did that mean for this baby…and his big brother? I didn’t have hope, but I did confidently expect that hope and healing would come…I was adamant and even aggressive in the search of it. If I looked hard enough, I would find it again. If I just “stayed the course” in the valley, eventually, at some point, I would begin to climb again. We were doing the best we could…it was all we had to give. Stay the course…believe with confident expectation…read and learn…stay in the Word…pray…go to counseling…raise your boys…be a wife…do all the things you’ve been doing…stay the course…hope and healing will come…it has to...beauty from ashes…redemption from despair…rescued from abandoned.
I don’t remember when I desired to have birth pictures taken, but I do remember the why. My mind and heart told me that this baby would be celebrated…I would celebrate this baby because that is what has to be done…babies are a blessing and by everything in me, this baby would not be a replacement of Katie and would not be treated as such…he would be loved and nursed and cared for all the days of his life…however long or short. I was aggressive in my search of healing and these pictures remind me of that pursuit.
October 2020
years ago, our Gavin was celebrating his second birthday with his big sister and we were going through the days with our family. One year ago, I almost took my life from trauma and grief I wouldn’t and couldn’t let go of. Today, I can say with confidence that hope lives in me…I can feel in my heart the confident expectation that my God is an awesome God and everything He says is true and by his stripes, I AM HEALED. I can say, without shame or blame, that I rejected the grace that God offered me and my pursuit of controlling my own destiny, my own hope, led me to the
pit of hell. I only allowed myself forgiveness for things I felt worthy of begin forgiven for…Katie’s death was not one of those “forgivable things” on my list…it is the ultimate failure as a mother and a wife. I survived a car accident that killed my baby…my daughter…my first born…my side kick…my love…my husband’s daughter…my son’s best friend. I searched long and hard for small details to blame myself for…anything and everything…it had to be my fault…just had to be. I controlled the grace I received.
I can’t earn God’s grace, but I can choose to receive or reject it. I chose to reject it…until…
We will welcome our 3rd little boy at the end of 2020. We are closing out this crazy year with a baby and my heart swells with anticipation and excitement for what is to come for my family. My marriage is healing, my heart is healing, God is working His miracles minute-by-minute and day-by-day. My heart also breaks for what we’ve lost…Katie would have been…Katie could have been…Katie….Katie…Katie…God is also working His miracles in that, too.
The fact that God can, and does, use the brokenness of this world to save a wretch like me is a miracle. None of it was wasted time. I feel like I can stand tall, without shame or blame, and live out Romans 5. Verses 3 and 4 can be, and have been, painful, lonely, scary, devastatingly heartbreaking, and many other things, but getting to ve
rse 5 is a miracle. Sure, I’ll
go back and forth, up and down, with each trial and suffering, both big and small, but I can do it now with hope in my heart. I can live through the fires with the confidence that what God says IS true and His promises will be fulfilled from the first sentence of the Bible to the last.
Knowing I can walk through the fire and come out the other side tattered, bruised, and tired…but with hope…there are just are no words to describe that kind of comfort this side of heaven.
So, when Candace called and was talking to me about hope, I know exactly what it looks like…because I can see it in the faces of this family…my family.
"Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces per
severance; perseverance, character, and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us." Romans 5:3-5
Teddy. Brand new to the world and so incredibly loved. Welcome to the world little buddy!
]]>Here, Nora Kate, age 5, wears her grandmother's dress that her GREAT grandmother made by hand.
It's a thread running through the generations- love and belonging worn, making it to one more generation. So special.
Beautiful Nora Kate, beautiful light, beautiful family tradition, this common thread.
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I never want to miss this kind of deeper look into the soul of a child. A strong gaze makes for a strong portrait and oh how I love to get drawn into a child's world when they let me. What a privilege.
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I recently spent some time with this sweet family who will be moving in their newly renovated home in Shreveport, Louisiana, soon. It was all smiles and sunshine with this crew for sure. It made my heart sing for sure!
I got a call from a nurse at a local hospital on August 2, 2018 who told me there was a couple who needed a birth photographer. Their baby had not developed kidneys and they knew they wouldn't have long with him. I raced to the hospital that day and ever since, Brett and Stephenie have been like family to me. I am privileged to know them and to help them tell their story. Watch to the end and prepare to be inspired by the way they pioneer hope.
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For quite some time, I've been focused on HOPE, turning it around and upside down and inside out in my heart and mind. How does HOPE keep us afloat? What does it look like? It's not glib, I know that. This 2020 craziness has taught me that sometimes hope is the white knuckled hanging-on type, gritty and raw. But still... it's there, always offering an outstretched hand.
And when we reach for hope, it lifts us. According to Emily Dickinson, "hope is the thing with feathers." I've found that this metaphor holds. Hope is a feather. It lifts, protects, and insulates. It's how we fly, how we rise above. Feathered hope is hope that helps us go on. Flapping to greater heights. “Further up and further in" as CS Lewis puts it.
With hope, we rise.
With hope, we can begin to see. Truly see.
Hope is beginning to be my lens. Instead of asking what hope looks like, I'm beginning to ask how does hope see? Every time I pick up my camera, I have become expectant. Hope-full.
I'm looking for it in my life and I'll look for it in yours, too. To the extent that you invite me in, I'll use my gifts to not only capture all the obvious beauty and joy of your life, but also maybe even inspire hope with something you haven't really seen before. I'll use my hope lens and maybe it will make a difference.
Has there ever been a better time to filter out all the uncertainty and fear and look for hope?
I'm here, I'm ready.
Let's do this.
Sign up for a session today!
With love and hope (and a new logo),
Candace
PS. I am ready and open for bookings for this busy fall season and the sooner we can get you booked, the better. You can book a session by clicking over to the home page and clicking "book a session."
PPS. I am looking to do one session a quarter pro bono, a HOPE SESSION. Email me to nominate a family or individual that could use an extra dose of hope during this season of life. I'll make selections from nominations every October 1, January 1, April 1, and July 1st going forward. Just send a little information about the family or individual and why they could use a hope session. Thanks, friends! Here's to hope!
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