14 Grandchildren, A Birthday Party, and Jenna Mammina
Friday, August 20, 2010, 12:02 PM
Posted by Johnny
What do 14 grandchildren; a birthday party; and
Jenna Mammina, have in common? Let me explain. Let’s start with Jenna Mammina, a fabulous vocal artist who resides in California, and has roots in Michigan. Every year Jenna performs at several venues in our Michigan area. In this particular year, we were photographing a few of her performances, including one at our favorite venue of all time,
The Acorn Theatre, in Thee Oaks. Before the performance, we arrived early to asses the scene, as is customary. Upon arrival, we were surprised to see a birthday party developing. Being that parties are what we commonly photograph, and that the amazing light pouring through the windows giving us an utterly inspiring view, put us in a state of perspective, pushed us to instinctively begin clicking the shutter. Still unaware of the identity of the people captured by our clicks, the night continued with us capturing the brilliant performances of Jenna and her family.
Following, as always, we downloaded and processed our images with the end result being an online gallery for each event. Soon after posting the images we noticed many people had visited the gallery for Jenna, but none had visited the anonymous gallery.
A short time later, we were celebrating, after a third Saturday gallery walk, at B Books in Three Oaks, when we recognized the face of the anonymous birthday boy. Upon hearing the news of the image gallery, the birthday boy, Bill, was surprised and grateful. Soon after we had sold images from both parties, beyond our anticipation. I guess we did a good job, and such a good job that we were recently called to photograph Bill’s 14 grandchildren.
This is how a business is built; part by chance, part by hard work, part by creative energy, part by talent, part by building relationships, and a whole lot of just being at the right place at the right time. We hope you enjoy the images that follow, as much as the people within them have.







