Photography & Portraits in Midvale

Don Polo Photography owner Adilfa Ford named her business after the grandfather who raised her on a rustic farm in La Luz, Venezuela. The only surviving pictures of her late mother and grandparents were taken by Adilfa herself as she honed her shutter skills and nurtured the seeds of photographic passion into a blossoming love of the visual arts. Accompanied by her husband, Russ Ford, Adilfa travels the globe to teach photography seminars and add to an impressive resume of more than 800 weddings, returning to her Taylorsville studio to snap more portraits of familial love and newlywed bliss. An ample amount of studio and garden space accommodates small and large portrait groups as they have their contagious smiles immortalized, posing in front of vibrant backgrounds or flourishing greenery. After the team of professional flash dispatchers finishes capturing precious moments, they digitally enhance, retouch, and spellcheck each picture's 1,000 words.

For more than 10 years, Somer Ahonen has been helping ladies find their best angles in her 1,800-square-foot studio and capturing their images in flattering and tasteful boudoir photo shoots. Her clients emerge gussied up from a dressing room and saunter into the private shooting bay, where Ms. Ahonen calls upon props such as a bear-claw bathtub or a bed with silky linens to create sensual settings. With several lighting techniques and an arsenal of makeup and editing skills, including airbrushing, she can tweak each image to her clients’ liking.

Mike Olson blossomed early. After first taking a shine to photography at age 12, he was already snapping shots of weddings and senior portraits in five states while he was still a teenager. Mike hasn't slowed down in the years since, serving as photographic supervisor at the inauguration of President George Bush, framing famed personage such as Donny and Marie Osmond, and running two photography studios. These days, he works with Scott Breen, who, like Mike, started his shutterbug career early. Scott opened his first studio at 23, and his more than 30 years of expertise have landed him gigs with the Utah Republican Party and Utah Jazz. Together, the two capture images of weddings, families, and children during on-location or in-studio sessions. Newlyweds can preserve their pictures with custom albums or high-resolution files, while portraiture patrons can print shots on artistic canvases or paste them onto the spare Picasso canvases moldering in the crawlspace.

While Dave Updike's passion for photography isn't surprising—his grandfather and father both owned photography studios—Jacques Nell only fell for the art form in his 20s after taking some formal classes. Dave's more than 35 years of experience and Jacques' passion for portraiture form the current backbone of JayLynn Studios, a studio in business since 1906. In addition to Dave and Jacques' pictorial expertise, JayLynn Studios' partnership with CoverLook—represented for the last 20 years by certified makeover maiden Cynthia Kimball—beautifies clientele for in-studio or on-location shoots. Specialists hand finish each print package for families, high-school seniors, weddings, or businesses with precise retouching, finishing, and gentle caressing of printed images.

Using the great outdoors as her studio, Giggles and Smiles Photography's resident photog, Heather Barber, photographs families and children as they pose beside rustic barns and verdant foliage. Heather believes natural settings like these are crucial to get clients to display their true personalities. As the shutter clicks, she can capture little ones playing in the leaves, siblings playfully putting gum in one another's hair, and parents holding their children. After shoots, the professional shutterbug can edit images and transform them into styles such as black and white.

Val Westover and Stephanie Adriana, both authors and photographers, draw from diverse artistic backgrounds. Val once trained hundreds of photographers as the manager of a nationwide portrait studio, and Stephanie has seen her work featured in an array of photography and fashion magazines. Applying fine-tuned artistic styles, they snap candid photojournalistic compositions and posed portraits of new couples, newborns, mothers-to-be, families, and secret families.

They also pass on their skills through step-by-step workshops, during which they use a blend of professional tips and practice exercises to teach the basics of ISO, shutter, and aperture alongside applied artistic principles. They then give protégés free rein to practice what they’ve learned in hands-on, on-location photo safaris, during which students capture shots of wildlife and people.