Somewhere on your phone there are four thousand pictures. Your kids at the beach, your mother at Christmas, your husband asleep on the couch with the dog. You took almost all of them, which is exactly why you are in almost none of them.
Most women I photograph in McAllen tell me some version of the same thing when they walk in. They cannot remember the last time someone took a real picture of them. Not a snapshot at a birthday party, not a selfie in good light, but a photograph made on purpose, of them, by someone paying attention.
That is what a studio portrait session is, and I think a lot of women in the Rio Grande Valley have never known it was an option available to them. It is not a headshot for LinkedIn, though we can make one of those. It is not a family session where you are standing at the edge of the frame making sure everyone else looks right. It is a couple of hours built entirely around one person.
Here is what actually happens. We talk first, before you ever book, about what you want this to feel like and what you want to do with the images afterward. Hair and makeup are done here at the studio. We go through what you brought, and I direct you through every single pose, because nobody knows what to do with their hands and I have never once expected someone to figure it out on their own. Then a few weeks later you come back and we look at the images together on a big screen, and you choose what you want to live on your wall.
The part that surprises people is not the photographs. It is what happens partway through the session, usually around the time you stop thinking about your arms, when you catch yourself in the mirror and something shifts. Women cry at the reveal more often than you would think. Not because the images are flattering, but because they show something recognizable that had gotten hard to see.
You do not need an occasion. You do not need to lose weight first, and you do not need to wait until things calm down, because they will not.
If you have been the one behind the camera for years, this is the other side of it.
Start with a fifteen minute call. No pressure and nothing to prepare, just a conversation about what you would want yours to look like.
Nicole Gates Photography is a portrait studio at 321 N. Main Street, Building B, in McAllen, Texas, serving women and their families across the Rio Grande Valley.
Ready for your own session? Explore our women's portrait sessions in McAllen.