Business Spotlight - Photographer Amy Kennedy Celebrates 25-year Milestone

For a quarter century, Amy Kennedy has aimed her camera at Glenwood’s biggest moments and smallest joys, treating every family, every milestone, every smile as if it were her own.

And she still can’t imagine doing anything else.

“I’m not even ready to quit or retire,” Kennedy said. “I’m still young enough. It’s still rewarding. I love what I do.”

Kennedy, 58, opened Portraits by Amy in 2000, shooting families, senior photos, professional headshots and anything and everything in between in millions of shutter clicks. In November, her business hosted a Mills County Chamber of Commerce event and open house celebrating her 25 years serving the community.

“I was very pleasantly surprised,” said Kennedy of the turnout “You never know how many people are going to come or if you did a good job. At the very end, someone asked ‘Alright, who here has had their pictures taken by Amy?’ There were a lot of hands up. It was very humbling. I just about started crying. I was like this is awesome. This is why you just capture the moment because you just never know.”

Competition has come and gone in the community and Kennedy has persevered in a changing business and vastly different market than she entered 25 years ago. Everyone has a “camera” in their pocket now.

“There was a photographer that came to town, a friend of mine, about 15 years ago, and it bothered me,” Kennedy said. “I was like ‘oh my gosh, competition.’  But competition should make you better. And she said to me ‘Don’t change who you are, ever.’

“Even though, over the last 25 years, there’s been ups and downs, with the photographers coming in and digital being more dominant, I just really try to maintain I’m not going to change who I am. I go for the traditional, timeless, and trendy. I try to capture the moment. I try to capture the soul.”

Kennedy never thought she’d be a professional photographer. A business major at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, she minored in photography but never gave it much thought as a career despite it being the family business. Her parents owned a photography studio in Lincoln she worked on and off at during high school and college.

Kennedy was working for US Bank and pregnant with her first son when her father beckoned her back to the family business. At first, she helped on the weekends. Then requests started coming in asking her to take family photos or senior pictures.

When the possibility struck that she could be a professional photographer, Kennedy leaned on her dad and his experience. He took her to conventions, introduced her to other professionals and gave her the mentorship – and the confidence – to soak in the business of photography.

“I’d make my dad walk around with me (at conventions) and answer any question I had whether it’d be speed, aperture, whatever,” she said. “And then he taught me several things about just seeing the light – and I knew it. I just never thought I’d do it because I’ve been around it for so long. I think that’s when it was. I realized, ‘Okay, I am a photographer.’”

And with that, the seed was planted. Portraits by Amy blossomed out of those early conversations.

Kennedy and husband Greg soon set to converting the basement of their home west of Mineola into a makeshift developing lab and studio. The space worked but it wasn’t ideal even if Kennedy knew she made the right choice.

“It was kind of a pain, I’m not going to lie,” she said. “People coming into your house and you’ve got to keep it clean. It was a lot of those things where my husband was like, ‘Well, what do you think?’ I told him I thought I could do this for the rest of my life.”

Kennedy loved working with people and the bookings while sporadic at first, began to pick up. She knew she made the right choice. In 2014, she and her husband constructed a new building – again, with professional input from her dad – on their property to serve as a proper office and studio.

“I can shut the door when I go home and go to work,” she said of the new space. “So yeah, I think when I first started helping my parents it was like ‘Yeah, I’ll help you out.’ But then when I started here it was like ‘Okay, this is awesome.’ I could stay with my kids, make my own schedule, and be there for people when they want their picture taken.”

Looking back, Kennedy admits there were growing pains. She jumped in headfirst and knows now what she should have done – hire a bookkeeper – and not done – hire a full-time staff person.

“There were things that I didn’t want to do,” she said. “I just wanted to take people’s pictures and edit them to get them ready for print and not do the accounting side of things. I had all of that, but I didn’t have that right at the beginning, so I was doing all the jobs all at once. Then you find somebody that you love to work with, and it started getting easier and better as time went on.”

Kennedy is by-appointment only now. That’s eased the process and strengthened the personal connection she prefers. She books her own appointments and takes and edits her own photos.

“I really took those things to heart, a lot of what my dad recommended too,” she said. “When I take somebody’s pictures, we schedule a time for them to come in and I spend maybe another hour, hour and a half, going over the order, going over the images on a big screen. And just walking them through the process. Because nobody knows. When you’re a first time senior, nobody knows what to do.”

She tries to use her in-house studio, with pully system backdrops and lighting and her nearly four-acre property for as many shoots as she can but goes anywhere and everywhere her clients want to be captured.

“I just kind of go where the beauty is and just keep watching for different stuff. I did a horse session a couple months ago. They wanted their horses and their place so just do whatever they want, I go and do. I love not being in one place all the time and being able to see other things and meet other people.”

In the early days, Kennedy shot on film, painstakingly developing both black and white negatives and photographs in her studio. In 2005 she fully pivoted to digital.

“Once digital hit I was like, ‘Okay, this is okay,’” she said.

She just recently finally let go of her 30-year-old black and white enlarger, fully completing her flip to digital.

Don’t get her wrong, as a dyed-in-the-wool photographer, Kennedy still loves shooting on film, with its warmth and grain and sense of purpose on a physical negative. As a professional, and business owner, digital, however, is the medium she’s chosen, for its practicality and boundless canvas to shape and reshape the frame.

“Artistically, I really think at the end of the day, film is just awesome,” she said. “I don’t know if it was the anticipation of seeing what it looked like, especially when you did black and whites. My Dad would say, ‘You have to learn everything like the back of your hand and then everything else just flows.’ Which is so true. So, then you can be artistic and make sure the light is in the right place on their eyes. But then when you use digital, the tendency cab be to think that maybe isn’t as important because you can usually fix it.”

Photography is her business but she’s still shoots for her fun, mostly “sunrises, sunsets and Sophia,” her granddaughter.

Whether shooting digital or film, Kennedy said its always been her philosophy to “get it right in the camera first,” and not rely on post-production to fix those mistakes. It’s why she still relies on an old school external light meter. She prefers the timeless look that’s now become trendy.

Among Kennedy’s preferred shoots are sports, families and anything outdoors – sometimes in that order.
“My favorite right now – I stopped doing weddings in 2018 – is I really enjoy doing sports. We’ve just been a sports family so every time the season rolls around, I just love doing it. But then I don’t have a particular favorite. Families and senior (photos) I just love. Because you can just capture, keep shooting, keep creating until the dad looks at you and says ‘Okay, enough.’”

A note hangs over Kennedy’s computer that’s always served as a mantra, and a reminder, what she’s doing matters. “Believe bigger,” it reads.

“So, when people say that or call me and say, ‘I tried to take my daughter’s pictures on my cellphone and it just didn’t work,’ I don’t ever say anything I just say, ‘What can I do to help.’ And then we capture the pictures.

“When people see your work and they know who you are, I just let it try to sell itself. And I just try to give them a great experience when they’re here. I’m just trying to stay with who I am, give everybody the best experience I can, and have great images.”

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The Opinion-Tribune's Business Spotlight is sponsored by the Mills County Chamber Of Commerce.