Falls native Jackie Halla opens Capture Your Moment Photography
It’s appropriate that local photographer Jackie Halla found her passion — capturing people’s true selves in a photo — while working on a self-portrait project for a University of Minnesota, Duluth photography class.
“Ever since I was younger I told myself I’d love my job,” Halla said. And if the smile on her face while going through a collection of her photos is any indication, she’s met her goal.
The Falls native said that she was enrolled in the UMD graphics design program but found that her interest was piqued in a photography class. And she said that while finishing a self-portrait project, where she posed with her fiance, she decided that she wanted to switch her major to digital art in photography.
Halla, whose company is called Capture Your Moment Photography, has been traveling back and forth between International Falls and Duluth every weekend. She keeps busy with school and work in Duluth during the week and starting her budding photography business in the Falls on the weekends.
For Halla, photographing a person is about more than taking a picture — it’s about finding out who a person is and making sure that shows through.
“I try to find how people really are and have that come out in the photographs,” she said.
For example, Halla shot a photo of a young boy making a scary face. She had learned that he had a fascination with monsters and brought that aspect of his personality out in the photo.
With kids especially, she said, it’s important for them to have a fun, inviting situation where they can relax and be themselves.
“It’s better when they’re playing, running around with dirt on their face,”she said.
She often takes her clients to locations in her home studio’s backyard or around town so that they can get into nature and familiar, personal settings.
“I’ll know when I get the one — that second I take that picture and know who they really are,” she said.
That also transcends to photographing adults during wedding or graduation picture sessions.
In her wedding photography, she said she tries to capture that special moment for the bride and groom — a moment they may not even remember if not for the picture. It may be as simple as a smile, but Halla wants her clients to have those special moments forever.
“I want them to remember every little detail of their day,” she said.
A recent trend she said she enjoys sharing with brides is “trash the dress,” where a woman wears her wedding dress after the big day and does things a bride would rarely do, like swim or play in the dirt.
Unique circumstances such as these are just one way that Halla hopes to make a niche in the local photography business. She said that with so many people having their own, high-quality digital cameras now, she hopes that her creativity will set her apart.
She does that through both the way she takes the photos and in the editing process. She often works with photos by manipulating contrast, making an image black and white with spots of color, and other touches that enhance the details of an otherwise routine picture.
“I want to bring something different to photography. I like to have a creative look at it. I hope to create a niche with the creative aspect,”she said.
“Once I take the photos I’m really excited to get on my computer and start looking at them,” she said. She adds that after a successful photo shoot she often stays awake well into the night working with the images.
Halla said she is also very excited to move back full time to International Falls and concentrate on her business.
Halla, who grew up in International Falls, said that she had hoped to return to Borderland after school. She said that starting her own business here, especially a photography business which survives on reputation, made sense because she already knows many locals.
“It’s nice being in a small town where you know people,” she said. “It’s nice being able to take pictures of people you’ve known your whole life.”
And if Halla doesn’t know her clients, she said that she makes a point to know them by the end of a shoot.
There’s just one small problem. Halla said she still needs to find someone to take the pictures at her wedding next summer. It is often hard for someone used to being behind the camera to be in front of the lens. But Halla said she may recruit one of her classmates from UMD, some of whom have entrusted her with capturing their special moments and whose opinions she values, for the job. And then, she said, she can finish planning the wedding.
Halla can be reached at 218-324-1741 or emailed at jackie_halla@hotmail.com. Her company’s Web site is http://www.captureyourmomentphotographymn.com.
