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The Pates at Home with their Family Portrait Photographer

January 17, 2016 By Jessica Lily

As their family portrait photographer, I have watched these two beautiful boys grown from the smallest little tots to become this amazing young men.

This was a particularly memorable session for me because Chatham (the 8 year old) and I had a very, very extended talk about Amoebas. This was serendipitous for me, as I am half way through making a music video for Elise Witt’s song Amoeba and I was given specific instructions to research them, to learn about what they are before I make the video. This seems reasonable. But, how wonderful then, that scientist extraordinaire know about them and their shape shifting ways. These boys are always a delight for me to work with and they certainly inherited their mama’s good looks. What a joy it is for me to create these images and I so dearly love this sweet family.

Decatur family portrait photographer Jessica Lily was formally trained in fine arts & photography. Her commercial and family portrait images tell a story and they are easy and fun to be a part of. After 12 years of being a professional Atlanta portrait photographer, she continues to deeply enjoy the work and the people. She is inspired by the people she works with. Co-creating with doctors, toddlers, spiritual guides, rising seniors, yoga teachers, lawyers, artists and musicians presses her forward into new territory, both with aesthetics and also with living a good life. Jessica Lily works in Metro-Atlanta and offers Family Portraits Sessions, Atlanta Headshots, Business Portraits & Graphic Design in Decatur, Lawrenceville, Tucker, Lilburn, Buckhead, Midtown, Piedmont Park, Inman Park & Old Fourth Ward as well as many other parts of town, here in Georgia.

Official Music Video Production for Elise Witt’s My Salsa Garden!!

December 16, 2015 By Jessica Lily Leave a Comment

For Elise Witt’s My Salsa Garden Official Music Video Production, we happily danced in her inspiring garden, played in her flowers and danced with the neighbors.

I was tickled to edit the footage, from Mick’s jaw dropping pepper squeal to little Naya jumping in and out of camera. Creating this music video production (this is the first release for three that we are creating together) is turning out to be really fulfilling, creative and exciting work for me. This might all be obvious, given my love for music, storytelling and camera work, but this is the first opportunity I have had to create a series like this. My previous film projects have all been more documentary, and this is a little bit more conceptual with a storyline (kind of)! A real short film, telling the story of Elise’s glorious Salsa Garden. I am so excited to share the beautiful fruits of our labor and play.

This video was recorded over two different shooting days and on each we used two different cameras. The first, we really focused on lyrics and garden imagery. Then, on the second, we brought out friends, family and neighbors to play! When editing the footage, we were able to select the camera that Elise’ loved the most for portrait images of her, making sure that she felt beautiful and inspired by her own telling of her song. Our relaxed shooting style helped us to capture the quirky air instruments and camera jump ins!

Here are the official music video production credits!

MY SALSA GARDEN from Elise Witt’s CD “We’re All BORN SINGING.”
© Non Si Sa Mai Music ASCAP
Filmed, directed and edited by Jessica Lily. (www.Jessica-Lily.com)
In the video: Elise Witt, E’yunni Hill, Naya Tatum, Daniel Jenkins, Milly, Jessica Lily, Mick Kinney
Music: Beverly Botsford (percussion), Marlon Patton (drums), Ken Gregory (trumpet, guitar, bass); Elise Witt, Sonia Osio, Terry Garthwaite, Becky Reardon, Beverly Botsford (vocals)
www.EliseWitt.com

Roswell Mill Kids Portraits with the Moss Family!!

November 8, 2015 By Jessica Lily Leave a Comment

The stunning, perfectly beautiful Moss babies have grown so much for their Roswell Mill kids portraits this year!

This is probably one of the most rewarding things I do each year: check in with how all of my clients and their little people are, watching them grow. I guess probably me growing with them, too. My ideas for what makes a portrait meaningful changes over time.

One thing that has never changed is a part of my method that gives us all space to rest easy for our portrait session: I decide what is the most, most important image to get and I do that immediately when we meet. Before the kids can decide what kind of a mood they will be in today, before anyone can even think about what kids of adventures await us. Then, as soon as that is done, we are ready to really get started. Parents can rest assured, we already have a christmas card picture, and we already have that one kids portrait that they were really anticipating, the one they were daydreaming about, and we can be less focused on taking good pictures and more on just enjoying ourselves.

This year, for example, when I asked, Lindsay wanted a beautiful, classic portrait, close up of her big kids. So, we did that right away. A daydreamy, bright eyed, straight into the camera faces trio. I love that about working together with people: most often, my ideas are ok and a little redundant. My work becomes exciting because people tell me what they imagine NOW, what is most interesting for them at this moment, and I can respond to that: think about how that affects my perspective, let that change my path and follow them as inspiration. And, of course, this kind of follow based inspiration is what can bring us to my favorite images from a session. This time, its the tickle family picture at the very of this series. Its alive, is is moving with my camera, and these people are lost in this moment, too, this tickle war is palpable and I can feel the love.

Decatur family portrait photographer Jessica Lily was formally trained in fine arts & photography. Her commercial and family portrait images tell a story and they are easy and fun to be a part of. After 12 years of being a professional Atlanta portrait photographer, she continues to deeply enjoy the work and the people. She is inspired by the people she works with. Co-creating with doctors, toddlers, spiritual guides, rising seniors, yoga teachers, lawyers, artists and musicians presses her forward into new territory, both with aesthetics and also with living a good life. Jessica Lily works in Metro-Atlanta and offers Family Portraits Sessions, Atlanta Headshots, Business Portraits & Graphic Design in Decatur, Lawrenceville, Tucker, Lilburn, Buckhead, Midtown, Piedmont Park, Inman Park & Old Fourth Ward as well as many other parts of town, here in Georgia.

Album Art for Elise Witt’s We’re All Born Singing

September 14, 2015 By Jessica Lily Leave a Comment

When Elise first asked me to create the album art for her newest and really huge project, We’re All Born Singing, I was thrilled and a little bit scared! Elise is one of my personal hero’s and she has wholly transformed how I think about singing in my life and how singing is available to experience. (Rather than just being on a stage, which was not fulfilling me the way that I hoped it would.) What I wanted was a more spiritual, more honest connection with music and less making a spectacle of myself. I am a songwriter to the bone, I write melodies every moment, especially now with a 5 month old to sing with. But, what Elise does with music is so much larger than the kinds of concerts I was putting on before. She sings with her audience and they sing with her, the audience transforming into instead just all kinds of people, singing together in harmonies, immediate and so present. And she brought me to my great musical love, improvisational group singing. As I am continually traveling with my life, often in unplanned directions these days, I can only hope that I can bring some of her light into my own life.

Elise Witt’s album art for We’re All Born Singing combines all of the things that are amazing about her into this big, huge musical statement.

Inviting and full of love, spanning such a large mass of space – tiny spaces with small sounds on Amoeba and a field recording of Song Deep In Your Bones in the huge outdoors! In the last few weeks, I have awoken in the morning more than once with Song Deep in Your Bones running as a motivator for me to keep moving forward. Tired and worn as I feel, I am at the same time filled with creative spirit and an eagerness to keep on, creating and creating and creating.

For this album art, I collected a series of photographs of her most intimate personal spaces at her home. I collaged them together to represent her poetry, in both literal and abstract ways. I merged them with these really beautiful water pictures that photographer, Carol Burch-Brown took. At her CD release show, we are thinking about making some art pieces from them to sell beautiful display pieces of her words and my images together.

Here are some pages from her album art, as well as some additional promotional pieces we made to showcase her work and upcoming concert.

Emory Photographer with X-Ray director John Bacsa

July 31, 2015 By Jessica Lily 2 Comments

As an Emory Photographer, I visited the University Chemistry Department’s Atwood building to see some of their new space and to photograph the new X-Ray lab with director, John Bacsa.

They had me back after a really great session we did last year that was a really extensive three day shoot, covering headshots of the faculty and staff, and details and narrative work images of a bunch of labs. This time around, we did a quick shoot for some marketing pieces they are creating to promote this new and very exciting space. We had a good handful of graduate students around in the lab, and did a combination of shoots that showcase John and his students working in the lab.

This is a style that I am so fluid with and really is exciting for me, images that really capture the essence of a space being used by the people who work there: images that capture the essence of your work. This is a new byline I am thinking about using that my friend Elise suggested!! It is such a beautiful way to put it, and really explains my work very succinctly. As I learned once at a business class, it even would fit onto a t-shirt!! Perfect.

Some of the more compositionally exciting images for me are the through the glass images that show the complexity and layers of the students at work: an image idea that the chemistry program director, Kira thought of! Images that really drive my work and move me while I am creating them are also the macro images, really close up pictures of the chemistry details. The chemistry department in general is one of my favorite spaces to work in, obviously, because it gives me so many little exciting textures and details to inspect!!

Want to see more images that capture the essence of your work? Click here.