Behind the Portrait — A Boone Family, Two Decades, Five Children
Where This Story Starts
Emily called Burton Photography for the first time more than twenty years ago. Her oldest daughter was about a year old, and she wanted a portrait. Not a quick snapshot, not a digital gallery that would live on a hard drive. A real portrait, made by people who would take the time to know her family first.
That first session was the beginning of something neither side knew would last this long. Since then, Burton Photography has photographed Emily's family through babies and toddlers, through the five-year-old milestone she made a deliberate point to celebrate for each of her five children, through four senior portrait sessions, through Portraits on the Parkway events, and through full family gatherings on the Blue Ridge Parkway that bring everyone together in one frame. The family has grown. The children have grown. The portraits have kept up with every chapter.
Emily is part of one of Boone's most established families, and she has never once let a major milestone pass without a portrait to mark it. That is not an accident. It is a choice, made deliberately and repeatedly, by someone who understands that time moves whether you document it or not.
This portrait was made in a field near their home in Boone on a late fall afternoon when the landscape had gone warm and painterly, the leaves off the trees and the light sitting low. There were four children then. The youngest had not yet arrived. Burton Photography found the best natural light available in that field and built the session around it, the way every session is built, which is why this portrait still holds up alongside everything that came after it.
The Five Year Portraits
Emily made a decision early on that each of her children would have a portrait made at five years old. These two portraits belong to her two younger daughters, both photographed at the rustic fence lines that run along the Blue Ridge Parkway. One was made at Thunder Hill, with its nearly 180 degree views south over the Yadkin Valley. The other was made at The Lump at milepost 264.4, a quieter spot on the Parkway with rolling forested slopes and the kind of stillness that five year olds somehow sense and settle into. Both little girls stood at those fence lines and were exactly themselves. That is all a children's portrait should ever ask.
The youngest daughter came after all of this. Photographed at home in Boone, NC at about a year old, standing at a sunlit window in a white dress, she is the last of five children and the one who completed the family Burton Photography has now followed across more chapters than most photographers see in a career. Her five year portrait is still ahead.
The Senior Years
The oldest daughter wanted flowers for her senior portraits. Burton Photography found her the dahlia beds at Eseeola Lodge in Linville, NC, a private historic mountain resort built around a classic chestnut bark lodge adjacent to the Donald Ross designed Linville Golf Club. It is not a location that appears in anyone else's senior portrait gallery, which is exactly the point. Every senior portrait session begins with a real conversation about who the senior is and what they want their portraits to look like. For this senior, the answer was flowers, and the planning process found her the most beautiful ones available.
Emily's oldest son was photographed at Thunder Hill on a summer day when a rain shower had just cleared. When the clouds get pushed down into the mountain ridges after a summer rain, the view from Thunder Hill turns into something that looks more like a painting than a photograph. He was there when it happened. The portrait shows it.
Emily's second son was photographed at Julian Price Park on the Blue Ridge Parkway, settled into the base of one of those old trees like he had been sitting there all afternoon. When you have been in front of a Burton Photography camera since before you can remember, that is exactly what a senior portrait session looks like.
The middle daughter was photographed on her family's own property near Boone as the sun dropped behind the Blue Ridge Mountains on a fall evening. She is a dancer, and it shows. The reclining pose in a field of fall grass with mountain views behind her did not require much coaxing. She made it her own, which is how the best senior portraits always come together.
The Family, Mid-Chapter
Doughton Park on the Blue Ridge Parkway brings Queen Anne's Lace and yellow Coreopsis into full bloom across its open meadows every mid-summer, and on a sunny afternoon with a family of seven spread across that field, the result is exactly this. All seven of them, with five children ranging from tween to twenty-something, gathered in a field that looked like it was arranged specifically for this portrait. It was not arranged. Knowing when to be there and where to stand within it is the kind of knowledge that comes from decades of photographing families across the Blue Ridge Parkway.
The five siblings made the short walk up the trail to the rocky bald at Doughton Park near sunset. They were not alone. A herd of cattle was already occupying the bald, grazing on the leased Parkway land the way they do most summer evenings along this stretch. The cattle assessed the situation, determined that nobody had brought them anything worth staying for, and moved off at their own pace. The session proceeded as planned.
The Portrait That Keeps Going
This is what twenty years of portrait sessions looks like when you lay them all out together. A baby at a window. Two little girls at a Parkway fence line. Four seniors finding themselves in the Blue Ridge Mountains. A family of seven gathered on a rocky overlook above the High Country while the light went warm behind the ridges.
Emily started calling Burton Photography when her oldest was a year old. She has not stopped. The youngest is still in middle school, and her senior portraits are still ahead. The story is not finished.
If you are ready to start your own portrait story, the conversation begins with a complimentary consultation. Burton Photography serves families throughout Boone, NC, the NC High Country, and beyond, and every session begins the same way — by getting to know the people behind the portrait.
burton@NCphotographer.com · 166 Chapel Hills Rd., Boone, NC 28607 · (828) 773-7873
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