Brief History

In 2005 after 18+ years working professional careers, we established Manning Photography chasing our dream of succeeding in our own family business.  As you may realize with the sluggish economy and how competitive the field of photography is, our challenges were plentiful.

Our competitive edge was quickly discovered as we realized the extreme natural talent Stacey has when it comes to capturing portraiture.  The images we create are our product and the heartbeat of our business.

We took to the marketplace Stacey’s work and quickly began building our business.  We started in the wedding, event and family portrait business and over time have added several new lines to our services including senior portraits and our sports photography division.

Our Studio   

One of our greatest accomplishments over the past 7 years is the development of our studio.  We started in a small facility in Altoona renting equipment and space from a fellow photographer.  We then began to invest in our own studio equipment and brought our operation in-house (literally!).  For two years we operated from our home.  We outgrew the space on day one so for those two years we were on a mission to grow the business to the point that we could move our studio off-site.

In February of 2011, we opened our NEW studio in downtown Tyrone (next to Gardner’s Candy).  The space is very nostalgic and provides us with the perfect location to serve our customers.  We have over 2,800 square foot of usable space including a meeting room and a space dedicated to our post-production.

One of our unique studio components is a system called Virtual Backgrounds.  The system enables us to have literally 1000’s of backgrounds in our studio.  The way the technology works is absolutely amazing and we use it on mostly every senior session.

Unlike green-screen technology that has an unnatural appearance and is basically a post-production cut and paste process, with Virtual Backgrounds, we are capturing the entire image through the camera – completely seamless.

The most exciting thing about Virtual backgrounds is we can capture images from anywhere and covert them to a background.

Below are samples of Virtual Background images:

Post-Production Services

Stacey is our certified Photoshop specialist.  In the digital age of photography, it is necessary to “touch” every image and run it through some level of post-production.  Some images may only require a minimal color / light balance adjustment.  In portraiture, we are dealing with faces so by in large, there are more occasions where we will need to work with the images to eliminate unwanted blemishes and make adjustments to meet the demands of the marketplace.

The key to excellent post-production in portraiture is to correct the unwanted blemishes without overdoing and while maintaining a realistic look.  Stacey has mastered this art and is why our work is in such high demand.

At our studio, we have a complete photo printing lab where we process everything once it has gone through the editing process.  Once the images are created and finalized and the customer places their order, we provide the following:

• Custom designed books
• Prints of all sizes
• Mounting services
• Framing
• Memorabilia

Yearbook Publication

Yearbook Publication is our latest addition to the services we will offer to the marketplace.  Our skill-set is well aligned with the process of designing and producing yearbooks and is a natural progression to add this service.