The Family Portrait Meets Interior Design
Naples photographer Kelly Jones has been bringing family portraits off the hard drive and onto the walls of her clients’ homes for over a decade. Shortly after expanding her luxury family photography services to include design in the home after the portrait session, Kelly began to notice a trend. The homes where she was designing the largest gallery walls and statement pieces were mostly barren of family photos, with the exception of small frames scattered here and there. Beautifully designed interiors had been filled with art, sculpture, and works that left the residence looking perfect but lacking the personal touch that photographs bring—and that her clients were looking for.
“I mostly saw homes without any photos at all, but I also saw frames installed without photos, inexpensive canvases that didn’t fit the aesthetic of the rest of the home, and collages that were put together by the client that didn’t fit the space or the imagery, all in an attempt to get their photographs up on the wall,” she says. “There is a want and a need to surround ourselves with our memories and the emotions they evoke when we look at them. They are wanted and valued because they bring us back to a moment when our loved ones were together or when those who we have lost were still with us, and they serve as a reminder of a moment worth remembering.”
For many families in Southwest Florida, that happens on the beach during season. Every year, Kelly fills her schedule to capacity with families seeking the same goal: to capture the family together in a magical setting through luxury family photography.
“This past December, I found myself ordering dozens of fine art pieces for clients in and around Naples,” she says. “We designed so many beautiful gallery walls from our nights out on the beach, and over and over, I saw how these pieces just enhanced these gorgeous homes and gave that extra personal touch to already-beautiful interiors.”
The world of printed photographic art has seen a dramatic shift in recent years as the demand for a high-end product has grown. Gone are the days of settling for a generic, gallery-wrapped canvas ordered from a big box shop online. Today’s fine art prints are made to appeal to a buyer who views their images as as worthy of wall space as a piece of art. Premium archival papers guaranteed to last for over 200 years, hand-torn edges, museum-grade materials, and inks guaranteed to last a lifetime are all used to bring Kelly’s luxury family photography to life. Beautiful frames offer a wide selection of current finishes, and portrait design software allows all of this to be previewed on the clients’ own walls before placing an order for a single piece. The result is worthy of being displayed in any home, from Port Royal to lake houses in Michigan.
The success of her photography and portrait design business in Naples has shown Kelly that the demand for this type of installation exists beyond her local reach. Clients began requesting finished products of photo sessions done in other cities, with other photographers—even of their wedding day images that had never been printed. “Not all photographers offer finished products, and of those that do, there is a very small percentage who offer the top-of-the-line options,” Kelly says.
When clients came to Kelly and began asking to order printed work beyond just what she had taken, the idea to offer this service on a much larger scale was born. “I recognized that premium portrait art was not readily available, and I want to change that,” she says.
In 2024, The Portrait Coterie will launch as an online resource for upscale home owners and interior designers across the country who want museum quality pieces that fit current design trends, along with the ability to design and render on their own walls. Kelly aims to serve the $2 billion interior design industry with a solution that brings superior quality and style to homes nationwide.
“There are always going to be photographs that are meaningful to people and worthy of display,” she says. “I am here to make sure they that can happen in the most beautiful and lasting way possible.”
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