My wife and I are happy to recommend Suna Lee to anyone considering investing in a serious portrait of their family -- the type of portrait that will hang prominently in your house as a family heirloom for years to come.
When my wife and I had the opportunity to go to a very swank black-tie event, we thought it was the perfect time to have our portraits done in our formal wear. After doing some research on local photographers in the northern Virginia area, we decided to give Suna a try. We called her to schedule an initial consultation.
(Note: Although some of Suna's work hangs as an advertisement in one of the malls in Tysons, she is not based there and should not be confused with one of the lower-end chain portrait studios that operate out of the mall. She runs a boutique/bespoke operation in McLean.)
When we met her the following Saturday, she quickly put us at ease. When she showed us a portfolio of her work, we were blown away. We described our idea of having the portrait done in formal wear. She agreed that could work, but encouraged us to also consider something less formal. She suggested that we bring khakis and a white shirt/top to the photo shoot, as well as our formal wear.
After the consultation, my wife and I decided to go ahead with the shoot. Suna checked her schedule, and we agreed a date. Some forms were signed, and some money was exchanged.
A week or two later, we were back in the studio with our two sets of clothes: the formal wear and the more casual outfits. Suna and her two assistants (who were also both really nice) started us out in the casual clothes, taking pictures of us together and separately. Suna expertly directed us into a number of poses. I have to admit that several of the poses felt awkward or silly. At one point, my wife and I just started laughing. But what the hey! We just went with it.
Then we moved on to the formal wear. Same thing. Pictures together and separately -- in various poses.
Several hours later, we were done. Suna had taken hundreds of photos. This was not the type of experience you would get with one of the portrait photographers found in the local mall.
A couple of weeks later, my wife and I went back to review the photos. Suna had edited the hundreds of photos she had taken down to a more manageable number -- showing us what she felt were the best ones. She had also done various forms of post-processing. For example, she had converted a number of the photographs into black and white. She showed us the photos on a big screen in her studio. She first ran through them all as a slide-show set to music. My wife and I sat in stunned silence at how good she had made us look.
After this initial viewing, we went through them one by one, setting some aside for further review while discarding those we knew we didn't want. We then went back through the saved list, further narrowing the photos down. We did this iterative process another time or two until we had a small set of photos that we decided we wanted to buy as prints of various sizes. Suna told us that if we wanted additional prints in the future, we could always come back.
Here is what really got me, though. Although my wife and I did get some smaller prints of us in our formal wear, the picture that Suna, my wife and I all agreed was the best one of the batch was a black and white photo of us in our casual clothes laughing during what at the time had felt like an "awkward" pose, This is the picture that we bought in a large size and has pride of place on our living room wall. Put simply, Suna nailed it. That one picture captured us, our personalities, and our love for each other much more than the more formal pictures did. Formal wear tends to make you...well...stiff and formal. Suna understood this. And she also was able to see that we aren't really that formal a couple. We are actually pretty silly. While we may have come into the process with an idea of what we wanted, we came away with something so much more because we were open to Suna's ideas. While there are any number of people who could have gone "click" and taken a technically competent photograph of us, Suna was able to draw out and capture something deeper. It is this something extra that to me justifies the cost she charges.
If/when we decide to have our portrait taken again, we will definitely be going back to Suna. read more