(224) 434-3461 Check your date
Directed event portraits · Chicago + Tampa Bay

Two minutes off the floor. Thirty years on a wall.

A real portrait studio, built inside your reception. A photographer directs every guest into a black-and-white portrait, printed and handed over before they walk back to the floor.

Check your date The Portrait Station
A couple photographed full length at the portrait station, lit against a dark seamless backdrop
Silver gelatin · Key + rim · Directed sitting
The room

The night moves fast. One corner holds still. This is what they keep.

The commission

A working portrait studio,
built inside your reception.

The light

Studio strobes against a seamless dark ground: a key light shaping the face, a rim light lifting them off the black. The same setup a portrait is made with in a studio, carried into a room that has none of it.

The direction

A photographer stands at the camera and works every guest — the chin, the shoulder, the weight on the back foot, the beat of stillness before the shutter. That direction is the difference between a snapshot and a portrait.

The Portrait Station glowing like a lit stage inside a dark ballroom while a photographer directs a couple
The one lit, still thing in a moving room
Directed black-and-white portrait of a couple mid-dip kiss against a seamless dark backdrop
Silver gelatin · key + rim · directed sitting

A photograph.
Not a photo strip.

This is the object your guests take home. Not a strip of four in a coat pocket — a portrait, printed on the night, that ends up framed.

Two kinds of light

We shoot the chaos.
We direct the stillness.

Your reception is motion — flash and blur, candlelight and noise. The station is the still point inside it. Guests step out of the party, sit, and go back to dancing. The portrait outlasts all of it.

Flash-lit couple during their first dance while the candlelit room blurs around them
The room · Portra 800 · mixed light · 1/60
Directed black-and-white portrait of a bride with her veil at the Portrait Station
The station · silver gelatin · key + rim
Open the light log
What you receive

The night ends. Then the work arrives.

  1. On the night

    Every guest leaves holding their portrait

    Printed at the station and handed over before they walk back to the floor. Nobody waits for a link, and nothing depends on them remembering to download it.

  2. After

    The full edited gallery, to keep

    Every sitting from the night, edited and delivered as a complete black-and-white set — yours to print, frame, and send to the people in them.

  3. Always

    A photographer at the camera, all night

    Not an attendant restocking props. The person who lights and directs your guests is the person making the pictures, from load-in to the last sitting.

A guest holding a freshly printed black-and-white portrait, lit by candlelight in a dark reception
Handed over on the night
Made for

Whatever the night is,
it only happens once.

Couple leaning close at a candlelit reception table

Weddings

The reception after dark — done right.

The flagship night →
Couple in cocktail attire posing at a portrait station during a private party

Engagements & galas

Black tie deserves better than a ring light.

See the formats →
Directed black-and-white portrait of an elegant woman at a gala

Private events

Give every guest a portrait, not a party favor.

See the formats →

Serving Chicago · North Shore · Chicagoland suburbs · Tampa Bay

Your date only happens once.

We take a limited number of events per weekend so every room gets a full crew. If your date is set, find out now.

Check your date Call (224) 434-3461