The Elmores are good friends and neighbors of Chris Cummins’ sister. Like a lot of families these days, the Elmores have had many portraits done at a lot of places.
When we first talked with Sara, the family’s mom, about their family portraits, she expressed her anxiety over how her kids may act and tolerate having their portraits made. It’s not uncommon for moms, when first talking with us, to express to us their fears about how difficult their children may be during a portrait session. They’re convinced their kids won’t behave, they won’t sit still and will be a total test for our patience and skills. Sometimes the kids are a challenge, but much more often than not we find ways to help the kids become excited and willing participant in the photography. A little psychology and genuine fun is all that is needed. Often it is as simple as letting the kids be themselves and not feel overly managed, posed and guided. Kids know instantly if something doesn’t feel genuine and they hate it. Expecially when they are being told to not be genuine.
Above all we are patient and kind with children. This is one of our unique factors that we know separate us from the usual photography studio. In the end, Max and Sydney were angels and a dream to work with. (This is usually the case!)
It cracks me up how our clients and us develop the spontaneous nicknames for the images we are looking at during the viewing and ordering sessions. Regardless if it is a wedding, family, senior or baby portraits, certain images earn certain names. There’s an image called “marilyn monroe,” “grandma’s,” “gangsta,” etc. It really is funny! In the case of the Elmores, the youngest, Max, gave us his “blue steel” expression. You’ll see it below!
After a lot of hard work we have finally finished our first promotional video. We love providing beautiful images for our clients and wanted the video to express this passion. After all, it’s hard to get to know about the people behind a photography studio just by looking at their website. We hope you enjoy watching it half as much as we enjoyed making it!
Glow Imagery has been creating award winning family portraits
for 8 years and we’re just getting going! No one takes more time
and care in the creation of your family portraits and it shows.
What makes Glow Imagery so different is we want to capture the individual relationships and freeze those in amazing images that speak to your heart every day you see them hanging in your home. We believe your family’s photography should be more to you than just an image on Facebook that your friends comment on for a few hours and then ignore.
We’ve already photographed MANY families this year and our calendar is
filling up fast as we approach the holiday season. Book by October 7th
and save as much as 65%!
You Must LOVE Your Portraits - GUARANTEED-Or You Don’t Pay!
Our fall times are already booking up fast, so if you’re thinking of having a
beautiful family portrait created this fall, don’t hesitate to visit one of the
links below and find out more about our exciting sale. Or call us at (816) 550-8830.
Deadline: October 7th, 5pm-Then The Phones Close, Sorry!
We first met Brandy and Randy during the summer of ‘06. They were a newly engaged couple who were completely smitten with one another. We photographed their joyous wedding in 2007. During the entire period of being their wedding photographer I came to know an incredibly sweet. loyal and passionate couple who were absolutely adoring of our photography. Soon after seeing her wedding images for the first time Brandy told me I was going to be their family’s personal photographer from here on out. Wow… and boy did she meant it.
Fast forward to 2010, amid my planning for doing her sister’s photography in September the word spreads Brandy and Randy will be expecting their first child almost exactly the same time as Brandi’s sister’s wedding.
Now I know some sisters would be stressed that their sister would “steal their thunder” from their wedding but these sisters were not fazed at all. What an amazing time! What an amazing family too!
We did maternity portraits over the summer that turned out exceptional. If I haven’t posted those here I will soon. Baby Lyra was born days before her sister’s wedding and I think Lyra was spoiled rotten before the ink was dry on the birth certificate!
It’s a joy to be a part of our patron’s lives and create such emotionally priceless images to help them enjoy the tears of joy from these moments forever!
You can find this only here at Glow Imagery! We are very excited to announce a major addition to our catalog of wonderful and emotional ways to enjoy your photography - the Signature Image Quilt by Glow Imagery!
Now you can forever enjoy the warm love of your friends and family and your amazing Glow Imagery engagement session together with a quilt they can sign on your wedding day! Imagine your guests reaction when they discover the same old guestbook has been replaced by this! They will be humming about it all night!
No other photography studio we know of is doing this so you can only get it from Glow Imagery!
Let your wedding day memories keep you warm forever! Use your favorite engagement session image from Glow Imagery as part of a handmade quilt that you can lay out at your wedding ceremony or reception for your guests to sign. The quilts are handmade by Genevieve Cummins, the wife of Glow Imagery's chief photographer Chris Cummins.
Not only is the quilt so cuddle worthy, they can be hung just like a wall portrait as home decor!
Recently, we received a pretty swell thank you card from a wedding patron from this past summer.
I have always had two core passions in my life: photography and people. Weddings and portraits are a perfect blend of these two passions. It feels great to create something really beautiful for my patrons and create a friendship. Thanks Sarah and Brandon!
In the spirit of the season I wanted to share with you one of my favorite Christmas memories in the hope that you will share some of your favorite memories too.
I remember one summer, I may have been about 11 or 12 years old, I was digging through a bunch of boxes of stuff in our closet and came across a mysterious cassette tape. This is before digicams, mp3s and compact discs… back when cassette tapes were the standard of peak audio enjoyment.
Curious what the contents of the tape were I placed the cassette into one of our stereos to listen to it. After rewinding and quickly pressing the play button out came the sounds of a room of children making a terrific fuss. It was still a mystery several seconds in as to what was going on. Then the familiar sound of my dad’s voice emanated from the speakers. Instantly I knew what the cassette tape was, it was my family’s Christmas morning from years earlier.
A little background is in order here. The first few years of my life we enjoyed our Christmases with our grandmother in Baxter Springs, Kansas. It’s a tiny town located in the southeast corner of Kansas very close to Oklahoma and Missouri. In my family, the Christmas memories from my grandmother’s home in that forgotten little mining town are the very dearest for my siblings and I.
Even as an adolescent just about seven or eight years removed from the original recording the sound was fascinating. The background noises of a door shutting or the sound of creaking steps can uncover past memories through other senses. Listening to the cassette tape I could smell and feel my grandmother’s house, that slightly musty, old house smell, the pine needles from the Christmas tree, the swinging door from the kitchen that was the sort they use for high traffic galleys in fancy restaurants. If love had a sound it would be what I heard on that tape.
The recording is a cacophony of holiday cheer. There are screams of joy on the recording, there are many, many laughs and throughout there is my dad yelling “Hot dog!” when he sees his children’s reaction to their newly unwrapped gifts. That saying is a Jim Cummins trademark. “Hot dog” was it’s own exclamation point. No other words were necessary to convey his joy.
I hope we haven’t lost that recording. My guess is it went back into hiding to once again somewhere in the deep recesses of my parents home, waiting to reappear with additional mystery and unleash the same delight to whoever should place it in the nearest tape player. It just wouldn’t be as fun to know to where it is and not be able to say “hot dog” when we hear it for the first time.
What’s your favorite holiday memory? Tell us about it…
Katherine discovered Glow Imagery through one of our many photography exhibits we have been steadily setting up around town. Katherine and Brian will be tying the knot next July. Both bring a beautiful daughter to the relationship, creating a new family.
I love working with our clients to create atypical engagement sessions that are a statement of the couple and their story. Urban settings, graffiti walls and Loose Park are the norm for Kansas City photography sessions. Our studio tries to go beyond the standard solutions to find something more unique to the couple. For Brian and Katherine, the fusion of a new family with their daughters is very important to their love story. So we HAD to include the girls in the engagement session. It became a family session and engagement session, thus I call it the familygagement session. Enjoy!
We did two wedding receptions at the Scarritt Grand Ballroom last year and all I can say is wow! This location at 819 Walnut is remarkable in so many ways and it comes with the very best surprise you wouldn’t expect! That surprise is not the wonderful ceiling work, the marble interiors, the beautiful chandeliers, the spacious ballroom nor is it the ample parking. The Scarritt Ballroom has all of these wonderful things, but those aren’t the surprise. The greatest surprise is the energy and enthusiasm of the venue manager Shilah Anway. What a lady!
I love what I do. To have the impact I do on such a singular event in the lives of others with my talents… it leaves me at a loss for words. What an honor! I don’t think becoming tremendous at your job is possible if you doesn’t speak to something deeper inside.
Now, we’ve all worked with people who do a decent enough job but they don’t necessarily communicate a passion or spark for what they do. It’s just a job. If they had their choices of places to be and things to do at that very moment, you know it probably wouldn’t be working with you.
Once in a while you’re lucky enough to meet someone who truly loves what she is doing. Enter Shilah of the Scarritt Ballroom. She brings a sense of fun, purpose and enthusiasm to Scarritt’s events that is contagious to everyone else. People like her make everything thrilling. The funny thing about working with someone who believes their work matters is they make you feel like you matter.
What a beautiful baby girl! Kylie gave us a good 20 minute photography session which is just about all you can ask for from a two-month old baby.
I am pleased to report Chris Cummins, your faithful chief photographer of Glow Imagery, is an excellent sleep inducer for babies. Baby Kylie, like any true starlet, retired to her sleeping quarters after the session for a full day of sleeping. Being beautiful is exhausting!
One of the things which is different about Glow Imagery is Chris Cummins’ overwhelming desire to create a portrait of your child that “speaks” to you - that every time you look at it is gives you chills because it’s so perfect. We will take the time to plan and coordinate everything, so your portraits are emotionally meaningful to you.
Give us a call at 816-550-8830 to learn more about how we can create a wonderful portrait of your child that is even more beautiful than you ever dreamed it would be!
I came to know an incredibly sweet. loyal and passionate couple who were absolutely adoring of our photography. Soon after seeing her wedding images for the first time Brandy told me I was going to be their family’s personal photographer from here on out. Wow… and boy did she meant it.
In the spirit of the season I wanted to share with you one of my favorite Christmas memories in the hope that you will share some of your favorite memories too.
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