Recess | A Modern Take on Classic School Portraits in Central Texas

Hey Friends!

It’s been so, so long since we’ve posted here, but we have a handful of new things going on here at Loft Creative, and we want to share them with you! We’re excited to be breathing new life into this corner of our website as we share new projects.

Today we want to tell you more about our newest source of inspiration - Recess - our school portrait program that we’ve been developing over the past year. We actually launched Recess last spring…aaaannnnddd the next week the world shut down as we all found ourselves in the middle of a pandemic.

Needless to say we all had a tumultuous couple of months.

But, as some schools re-opened this past fall, we were able to pick up where we left off, photographing our first pre-schools, MDO programs, and homeschool co-ops in central Texas. We are both incredibly thankful for how well received Recess has been by parents and schools alike!

Several people have asked how two full-time wedding photographers pivoted to school portraiture, so we are sharing a little more about how we got here.

To be honest, we started tossing around the idea of a school portrait program years ago. But, at the time, we were still fully entrenched in the wedding photography world with little margin to explore anything more.

Conversations around the idea started as both of us sent our own daughters off to their first years of preschool. We quickly realized the school portrait market was lacking what we had spent the past ten years creating in the wedding & portrait photography industry - timeless, minimally processed, classic photographs to stand the test of time. As we took note of how we photographed our own children and how we approached wedding portraiture, we knew we could translate that same style into the school photography market and give parents really beautiful photographs of their kids! But we tucked the idea in our back pocket, knowing the time wasn’t right.

Fast forward a few years.

In 2019 we added two more babies to our families and closed the doors on our wedding photography business. However, we knew we weren’t setting our cameras down, just changing directions. Lifestyle sessions were and are part of our business, and of course the print shop offerings bring a bit of warmth and wonder we’ve come to love, but we knew we wanted to add another revenue stream to our company. And for this life season school portraiture fits so perfectly.

So we got to work on a whole new realm of photography while finding fresh vision and inspiration in the process. Recess allows us to document kids in a way that lets their personalities shine through while still creating simple, clean photographs. We’ve been able to bring the light and airy style we developed in the wedding photography industry and create modern school portraits that parents really do want to hang on their walls!

As mothers we know how precious it is to document your child, and we are honored that we get to play a small part in helping other parents record those fleeting years through Recess. We are excited to see how it grows over the coming years! If you are a school or mom interested in bringing Recess to your students, follow the link below to find out more!