Turn This Season of Childhood Into
Heirloom Wall Art
You’ll Treasure Forever
At Dale Studios, we create timeless family portraits in Eden Prairie for families who want more than snapshots on a phone. As a trusted family photographer in Eden Prairie, we help you capture this season of life and turn it into beautiful wall art for your home before it slips by.
How to Back Up Family Photos to Actually Last 50 Years
When people ask me what backup system they should use for their family photos, I usually answer with a question of my own. What year do you want those photos to be accessible? If the answer is next year, almost anything will work. If the answer is 2075 — when your grandchildren are your age
Creating a Generational Portrait Tradition That Lasts 100 Years
Some of the most meaningful conversations I have don’t happen at the beginning of a session. They happen at the end, when a family is looking at the portraits on my monitor and someone says, quietly, “My grandmother would have loved this.” That’s when I know the portrait is going to matter. I’ve been photographing
Printed vs. Digital: Why Prints Outlast Hard Drives
I want to start with something that might surprise you, coming from a portrait photographer who has worked in both film and digital for decades. I am not anti-digital. Digital photography changed this profession in real ways, and most of them were good. I can shoot more, review faster, deliver sooner. The technology is remarkable.
The One Portrait Every Family Should Take Before a Grandparent Passes
The families who come to me with the most emotion in their voices are rarely the ones with a new baby or a child heading off to college. They’re the ones who just lost someone. Not always immediately after — sometimes it’s months later, sometimes years. But they come in, and they sit down, and
How to Build a Family Photo Archive in a Weekend
Most people who want to preserve their family photos never start. Not because they don’t care — they care deeply — but because the project feels enormous. Decades of prints. Boxes in the attic. A phone camera roll that hasn’t been organized since 2014. I’ve had this conversation hundreds of times over my forty years
Why 80% of Family Photos Will Be Lost — and How to Save Yours
I’ve been a portrait photographer for over forty years. In that time, I’ve sat across from thousands of families — and I’ve had a version of the same conversation more times than I can count. Someone comes in to restore an old photograph. Or to commission a family portrait before a grandparent gets any older.
What to Wear for Children’s Portraits: Outfit Ideas by Age
Here’s something I’ve noticed over forty years of portrait sessions that most parents never see coming. It isn’t the difficult child that derails a session. It isn’t the lighting or the timing or even a bad morning. Nine times out of ten, the sessions that don’t fully deliver on what was possible trace back to
Preparing a Toddler for a Portrait Session
Let me tell you what a two-year-old actually is. A two-year-old is a person who has been on earth for twenty-four months, who is still figuring out what their body can do, who has approximately zero capacity for abstract future rewards, and who is experiencing almost everything for the first time. They are not a
Sibling Portrait Sessions: Capturing the Bond | Eden Prairie & Edina Photographer
There’s a portrait I made about fifteen years ago of two brothers — eight and four at the time — that I still think about. Families from Eden Prairie and Edina bring their kids to our studio for exactly this kind of session. We’d finished the formal part of the session and I was adjusting
How Often Should Minnetonka & Wayzata Families Take Children’s Portraits?
Nobody tells you how fast it goes. Families from Minnetonka and Wayzata trust Dale Studios to help them stay on top of these important milestones. People say it — “Enjoy every moment, it goes so fast” — but saying it and knowing it are entirely different things. Most parents don’t actually know it until they’re