A brand new national honor, in its very first year, awarded to thirty young portrait artists in the entire country. One of them works in Bellaire.
This year, for the first time ever, Professional Photographers of America named thirty young portrait artists from across the country to its inaugural 30 Under 30. One of the very first thirty is from Bellaire, Ohio.
What the honor is
PPA is the largest association of professional photographers in the United States. This is the first year it has ever named a 30 Under 30, a new national recognition for photographers under thirty whose work and craft stand out, not for volume, and not for followers, but for the quality of what they make and where they are going.
Here is the part that only happens once. There will be a 30 Under 30 next year, and the year after that, for decades. But there is only ever one first class. To be named among the very first thirty, in the year the honor began, is a distinction that can never be given again.
What it means if you are the one being photographed
Honestly? On the day of your session, nothing. You will still be nervous for the first four minutes. Your kids will still need bribing. I will still be the one telling bad jokes to get a real laugh out of your teenager.
What it means is that the person doing that is not learning on your family. The craft behind your portrait, the lighting, the posing, the finishing, the decisions you will never see, has been measured against the best young work in the country and held up.
Why it stays in the Ohio Valley
There is an assumption that work at this level lives in a city. It does not have to. The families here deserve artwork made to a national standard without driving two hours for it, and that is the whole reason Blackwater exists where it does.
Thank you
To every family who let me photograph them before there was a studio, before there was a name on the building: this is yours as much as mine.