50 Essential Portrait Photographers: Jason and Darcie Brown of Revival Arts Studio

Jason and Darcie Brown are a husband and wife team who work together to provide innovative, artsy portraits that capture life from an original perspective. They combine their diverse backgrounds in fine art, architecture, dance and music to create an artistic, visual legacy for their clients.

Why did you get into photography?

We thought it would be fun to take pictures so as newlyweds we scoured the Buy & Sell for a cheap, used SLR camera. We got one and after much trial and error, Jason started to formally study photography. Neither of us intended to pursue photography as a career but as our artistic and business skills grew, it became a natural transition.

Tell us a bit about your company.

We are a full service photography studio based in the Fraser Valley. While we do a lot of our photography on location, we also have a great studio space and are experienced at using a wide variety of lighting styles. We specialize in kid, family, architecture and commercial lifestyle photography. We are award winning members of the Professional Photographers of Canada (PPOC) and Professional Photographers Association of British Columbia (PPABC). We feel it’s important to give back and regularly volunteer our time and skill to non-profit organizations such as A Fighting Spirit where we photograph families who have a child with a critical illness.

How would you characterize your style of photography?

We find it hard to describe our photography in a few words and feel that it’s almost presumptuous to tell a viewer how our photography is characterized. We love seeing how viewers have their own perception of our photographs. Recently, while exhibiting a portrait of a girl photographed in a wall of vines, we had many people walk up to the photo and spontaneously stop and describe it to us. Each person saw something a little different in it. To us that means that we are conveying something about the subject while engaging the viewer as an active participant. A good portrait should evoke an emotion.

Who are your clients?

Our clients are people who love life and are willing to share a part of their lives with us. From moms to musicians. From babies to brides. We enjoy getting to know and photographing a wide variety of people.

What should your mom clients expect when working with you?

We enjoy working with Moms and have the experience and skills to make it a stress free, fun experience. We are parents ourselves, Darcie was a licensed Kindermusik educator and we specialize in photographing young children. We know what to expect from each age and stage and we have strategies to naturally bring out the best in each of our subjects.

Anything else to add?

We are currently creating a coffee table art book titled Imagine featuring portraits of kids. Every child photographed for this project will have his or her portrait published in Imagine scheduled to be released in September 2010. The entire $75 per family session fee will be donated to Matthew’s House, a respite home in the Fraser Valley for children with severe disabilities. We had over 100 kids sign up in the first week we announced the project on our blog and are still looking for more children to be involved. More information at www.imaginekids.ca.