Photography studio offers ‘more than memories’

Small Business Spotlight feature for The Memphis Daily News

June 10, 2013

Allison Rodgers will tell you that the most natural smile occurs going into, and coming out of, a laugh.

Rodgers has a lot to be smiling about these days. She and her husband, Jeff, are the owners of Allison Rodgers Photography on Collierville’s Historic Town Square.

It’s a business born of love. The two met while working at Good Advertising Agency and each made the rounds of agencies in town – including Sossaman & Associates (now Sullivan Branding), Red Deluxe and Walker Associates – as art directors before opening the photography studio in 2004.

At the time they opened the business in Olive Branch, Allison was working part time with Red Deluxe and Jeff was doing freelance design.

“It started quickly, faster than we wanted,” Allison Rodgers said. “This was supposed to be a part-time thing for me.”

The studio was founded at a time when “everybody was ready for a change in what they were seeing as far as traditional portraiture,” Rodgers said. “We were one of the first ones out of the gate with that. They were ready for images that had more life to them. They were ready to be able to have, personally, for themselves, what they were seeing in magazines. Up until this point, nobody was really doing that, nobody was doing that lifestyle, documentary, personality-driven, very custom work.”

The husband-and-wife team had found their niche and success followed, due in part to connections through the national network of the Professional Photographers of America that helped land them a gig doing the still photography for ABC’s “Extreme Home Makeover.”

The duo traveled to Montgomery, Ala., and Hattiesburg, Miss., where they worked closely with the show’s producers, a host of designers and the star, Ty Pennington . . . (read more)