From Portrait Experience to Your Wall: How Heirloom Artwork Is Designed
Most families think the portrait experience is the main event. For me, your artwork begins long before that, in your home, with a conversation about the wall where it will live.
That's the heart of an Heirloom Portrait Commission. I'm not creating a folder of portraits for you to sort through later. I'm designing one (or more) finished piece of art for a specific place in your home, and every step is built around it.
It starts with your family
Our first conversation is a discovery call. I want to know who your children are right now, what your family loves, and what you'll want to see on your wall twenty years from now. Those answers shape everything that follows.
Then I come to your home
At our in-home planning meeting, we walk through your space together and choose the wall. Seeing the room in person tells me things a photograph of it never could: the light, the scale of the furniture, how the space feels when your family is in it. Before I leave, I photograph the wall with a sheet of paper taped to it. That paper gives me a true reference for scale, so I can bring the wall into the design program I use and know the perfect portrait size for it. Then, during your design consultation, we'll look at it all together as we finalize your artwork. And if you spot another wall after I leave that might be the perfect home for your artwork, just do the same thing: tape a sheet of computer paper to the wall, take a picture, and send it to me.
Together we decide three things:
Where we'll create your portrait. Your family's favorite place, chosen for what it means to you.
The size of your artwork. Planned for the wall itself, so it fills the space the way it should.
Your color scheme. Wardrobe colors chosen for that room, because we're intentionally creating a piece of art that just happens to be your family. It should feel like part of your home, not an add-on.
Your portrait experience
By the time we meet at your location, I already know where the artwork will hang and how large it will be. That changes how I photograph your family. I'm composing for one finished piece, with the room and the size in mind, while still leaving space for the real, unplanned moments that make a portrait feel like you.
The guided cinematic design consultation
The next day or within the week, we sit down together to choose the final portrait. This isn't scrolling through a gallery on your own. I guide you through it, and you see your portraits the way they're meant to be seen, projected on the wall, then select the one that becomes the artwork we designed at your planning meeting.
Your finished artwork comes home
Every Heirloom wall portrait is finished and framed, ready to hang in the space we planned for it. I work with a custom framer in Brentwood. Once your portrait arrives from the lab, I meet with my framer to select the perfect frame for both your home and your portrait. You're welcome to join me at the framing appointment, or I can narrow it down to four choices and you can tell me your favorite.
When it is installed, it doesn't look like something added to the room. It looks like it was always meant to be there, because it was.
Planning your own Heirloom artwork
Are you ready to have your favorite faces on your walls? An Heirloom Portrait Commission takes you from that first conversation all the way to framed artwork hanging in your home, designed for your space and your family. Explore the Heirloom Portrait Commission, and if you're hoping for fall color this year, read Fall Color Is Here for Three Weeks for the timing.
Cate Connery Bury Photography is a high school senior and family portrait studio in Nashville, TN specializing in creating portrait experiences and artwork where college-bound seniors who struggle with perfectionism and comparison feel celebrated both during the experience and in the artwork we create together and come away believing that their worth isn't measured by what they've accomplished, but instead simply for who they are. The artwork we create together reminds them that their worth is there just because they are, and their parents feel joy and pride every time they walk past it on the wall. We also photograph families, creating experiences that feel polished but not stiff and artwork that makes them proud of the family they've poured their life into, see all they've accomplished, and step into whatever comes next knowing they'll be just as successful there.
