By JULIE CARLE
BG Independent Media
Photographer Cheryl Hagemeyer has developed thousands of relationships and captured images of more milestone memories than she can count.
August 2022 marked her own milestone. Hagemeyer Fine Photography celebrated its 35th year in business. She and her sister Kathy Wilhelm, studio manager, recently sat down to talk about the successes and pivots they have achieved since the photography studio opened in August 1987.
For Hagemeyer, photography entered the picture after she bought a 35-millimeter camera in high school. She recalled taking pictures during the senior class trip and at other school activities. At about the same time, she learned about the Ohio Institute of Photography (now the Ohio Institute of Photography and Technology) and took a leap of faith by enrolling in the two-year program.
“I remember on the first day, the instructor asked how many people had never processed a roll of film before and I was one of only two people who raised a hand.”
After she graduated, she worked for an Illinois studio where she traveled to 15 states in six months and photographed 10,000 college senior head shots. “I got really good at those,” she said with a laugh.
She then took a job with a Findlay studio where she helped with weddings. When she decided to open her own studio, she connected with David and Lissa Addington of Sundance Studio in Bowling Green. They helped open her business as she helped them close theirs.
The first studio was on Railroad Street. A year into the business she heard a speaker talk about the value of high school senior customers generating additional business. She was so excited about the idea, she told her sister to quit her job as a social worker at Lutheran Homes in Napoleon to come work with her.
Wilhelm, who had just had twin daughters, realized the full-time job and raising 18-month old twins wasn’t working. A couple of months later she quit her job and told Hagemeyer she was ready to work with her.
With the speaker’s advice to market to seniors a distant memory, Hagemeyer had a moment of panic, concerned that the business couldn’t support incomes for both of them. “We agreed. We had to make it work,” Wilhelm said. And they have made it work for more than three decades, in three locations and with changes that were huge on both the photography and marketing sides.
The change from film to digital in the early 2000s was monumental for Hagemeyer, the business and the industry.
“We had just moved from our second location on South Main Street to our current building (at 13226 County Home Road) and the economy was kind of taking a dip at that point too,” Hagemeyer said. “We weren’t super quick to make the change to digital, but we also weren’t terribly delayed. The investment was huge, but we knew change was necessary to move forward.”
“For us, the quality of the image was a big part of our decision making. There was a point when film looked better than digital. To jump to digital just to be on the new format was not the best thing for our clients. We spent a lot of time studying images side by side,” Wilhelm said.
Once they were satisfied that digital images could produce the quality of prints they prided themselves on, they made the switch. The change to digital and the move to County Home Road was in 2007.
The change from film to digital photography has made work tough for a lot of photographers to maintain a business, Hagemeyer said.
“With billions of photographs taken on cell phones these days means that the value of photographs has decreased. Fortunately there are still plenty of people who value what we do, because obviously there is a difference in the quality,” Hagemeyer added.
Quality is especially important for marking family milestones, whether it is capturing the many interests of graduating seniors, the specialness of multi-generation family portraits or the wonder of newborns.
“The quality of that image and the last-ability are all things that Cheryl and I have based the foundation of what we do. We continue to believe so strongly in the importance of printing those images, though so many people don’t do that any more,” Wilhelm said.
They are concerned that there will be a lost generation if images aren’t printed. “If you don’t print the poignant ones that mark the milestones that mark the memories you want to remember, they are probably going to be lost in the numbers,” she said.
A four-generation photo of Wilhelm with her mother, one of her twin daughter and grandson is the perfect example. The photo was taken when their mother, who has been battling cancer for four years, was feeling good. A similar photo was taken with great-grandmother, grandmother, the other twin and grandchild.
“The portrait(s) shows that we value for ourselves what we do. We captured a milestone we never want to give up and a day that just marks that memory,” Hagemeyer said.
In addition to the change in the industry, changes in marketing and communicating also impacted the business over the past 35 years.
“I could probably write a dissertation on the evolution of communication of teenagers,” Wilhelm said.
They have had to move from phone calls to email to texting and to social media. And each medium required a pivot to figure out how to reach the seniors.
“There was a time three years ago when I talked to the students about putting together their contacts and they would tell me they didn’t have any contacts on their phones. Whereas a year or two before that, they had 500, 600, 700 contacts in their phones. Now their contacts are on Snapchat, so they don’t know their friends phone numbers. So I had to rework all of that on the fly,” she said.
Today, the majority of the conversation with seniors, their parents and others is on the Web, but Hagemeyer and Wilhelm are firm believers in the power of conversations face to face.
“We build personal relationships with students and parents and we explain how we are different, what we have to offer. That is how we share with them who we really are and what we have to offer. The message hasn’t really changed but the delivery is very different over 35 years,” Wilhelm said.
“If you are going to do anything for 35 years, you have to be willing to change, enjoy the change and not be afraid of it,” Hagemeyer added.
In addition to the changes in technology, they have included new print options. They still rely on archival paper for prints, but they have added printing on canvas, metal, wood, books and cards.
Hagemeyer also has recently added nature photography to her repertoire and markets those on an Etsy site .
What has remained stable throughout the three-and-a-half decades is the support of the community and the studio’s team.
The sisters are quick to point out their strengths and weaknesses complement each other. “We are lucky to have one another to bounce ideas off of, so we’ve been able to figure things out along the way,” Hagemeyer said.
They also rely on their staff to have a voice in their conversations and decisions. In fact, they were critical in figuring out how to navigate Covid. Together they decided how to keep the building, the staff and the clients safe throughout the pandemic.
Surprisingly business was good during the pandemic, except for the two months they had to shut down.
“What happened was that people’s focus came back to their relationships and they had time for those relationships,” Wilhelm said. “People were focused on family. For seniors, when so many things were not normal for them that year, senior portraits were maybe the only traditional senior experience that kids could have.”
They also captured many little children eating watermelon. “We kept booking and booking because people were hungry for normalcy and they needed pictures of their young children. We offered a safe environment next to our woods; they brought the watermelon and we stayed socially distanced. We got the kids to laugh and we continued to create experiences that allowed people to continue to create memories,” Wilhelm said.
“We are blessed to be in a community that supports us. There is a strong sense of roots in Wood County and our roots are deep here as well,” Hagemeyer said.
For more information about the studio or to schedule an appointment, visit the Hagemeyer Fine Photography website or call the studio at 419-354-2359.
