Profile: Stacy Dail Bratton by Larry Singer
It’s a Baby’s Life

When asked to identify the reasons for her success, Stacy Bratton—commercial and portrait photographer, book author and owner of the 11,000-square-foot SD/SK Studio in downtown Dallas, TX—credits both one-of-a-kind customer service and her ability to charm the living daylights out of sometimes-cranky two-year-old babies.

Bratton, who works primarily in black and white, specializes in capturing the images of young children, and over the years has shot more than 2500 baby portraits.

In addition to her commercial business, Bratton’s editorial work includes cover photography for Dallas Child, Baby Dallas and the Dallas Morning News.

ARTISTIC URGES
Bratton, though, did not set out to become a photographer. After graduating from high school, Bratton attended Southern Methodist University with the intention of becoming an opera singer. After one semester, however, she realized she really did not possess the motivation necessary to dedicate her life to music. First, she looked with longing toward Madison Avenue. Then she set her sights on becoming a gallery-quality brush and canvas artist.

“I began studying advertising,” she says, “until eventually my major was painting. I had about 105 units in art when I realized painting was fun and lovely, but it wasn’t ever going to pay the bills.”

Not wanting to completely abandon her artistic desires, Bratton found a suitable compromise and pragmatically enrolled in the photography program at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, because, she admits, “It seemed like photography was something in the art field that people bought.”

THE JOY OF BABIES
After graduation, Bratton interned with Dallas photographer Geof Kern. “It was quite a prestigious job for me to be able to work with Geof,” Bratton says, “even though it paid nothing.” It was during her two and half year apprenticeship that Bratton got married and began working with her new husband in his studio.

“When I quit to go out on my own,” she says, “I really didn’t get a chance to do much photography because I got pregnant. When we had the baby, I took a year off and wasn’t even planning to go back into photography because, although I considered commercial photography glamorous, I really didn’t like it.”

Fortuitously, because Bratton had no money for gifts, every time one of her friends had a baby, she would offer a photography session as a present.

“My friends would share the pictures I took for them with their friends, and within a few months, I was receiving one call a day asking if I would photograph someone else’s baby. I absolutely loved photographing babies, and one day it occurred to me, that I could photograph babies for a living. For the first time in my life, I actually understood what my client really wanted for me to capture on film: the same thing I wanted to capture with my child.”

During her next eight years of photographing children, Bratton’s husband stopped taking photographs and started building custom frames for his wife, as well as for other artists, designers and photographers.

SPECIALIZE AND SURVIVE
When asked how she survives the intense competition from the slew of talented photographers in the Dallas area, Bratton attributed her success to pinpoint specialization and the size of the marketplace.

“I think there’s a lot of people buying photography here and in great quantity,” she says. “Plus, I’m very, very small-niched, and my niche is babies. If someone here knows me, they know exactly what I do.

“The hardest part about photographing babies,” Bratton says, “is that you constantly have to market yourself. The parents aren’t looking at baby stuff a long time before they have a baby, so my target market is a pregnant woman who is about to deliver. This results in me having to do a lot of marketing because my potential customers never look in the places I advertise until right before they’re about to deliver, or maybe six months afterward. My main marketing tool is Dallas Child magazine, but my best advertising comes from word of mouth. We’ve survived because we are over the top in customer service, absolutely over the top.”

GOING THE EXTRA MILE
Bratton goes out of her way to cater to people who have been blessed with healthy bank accounts and credit cards with high limits; people who naturally expect a photographer to do whatever it takes to make them happy.

“Every single one of our jobs feels like it’s an exception to the rule,” Bratton says. “For example, everyone wants something just slightly different. Nobody wants his/her picture to look like somebody else’s. To satisfy a customer we will, if necessary, do whatever it takes—even if it means creating a custom background for one sitting.”

A classic example of this over-the-top customer service ethic was demonstrated for a client who wanted a very special, one-of-a-kind Christmas photo of his three young daughters.

“First I found a park in Dallas,” Bratton explains, “and then I got these big blue velvet capes and muffs and hats, rented a carriage and a man in a top hat, got the permit, and put down fake snow, which was a mess to clean up.

“We then put the three little girls in the middle of this incredible set wearing the muffs and the hats, and it looked just beautiful. It was an extremely expensive thing to do, but the client loved it, and I never duplicated it again.”

BABY LIFE
This past Mother’s Day, Bratton had her 160-page book, Baby Life (Taylor Trade Publishing), stocked on the shelves of bookstores throughout the United States. Featuring 75 of Stacy Bratton’s black-and-white photographs, Baby Life, is divided in five sections—Newborns, Signs, Emotions, Bodies and Favorites—and demonstrates Bratton’s talent—her ability to connect with her young subjects and expose their unique personalities.

Unlike most photographers who spend months, or years, fruitlessly seeking out a publisher for their book concept, publishing success sought out Bratton and literally walked into her studio, in the form of a photography client who just happened to be an author.

“This man, a writer, came to me and asked me if I could do his author’s portrait for the back of the jacket of his book called Fat Daddy,” Bratton says.

“The book,” Bratton continues, “which is also being published by Taylor Trade Publishing, is about fatherhood and how to men can stay fit among the chaos of raising kids. So, I said to this man, ‘Why don’t we photograph you with maybe 30 or 40 babies.’ The publisher’s marketing director thought it was a really cool idea.

“So I got a workout bench with barbells,” Bratton explains, “and posed the author on it wearing a beautiful suit and holding a baby while surrounded by 29 other infants.”

A few weeks later, after Bratton’s shot was accepted for the back cover of Fat Daddy, several representatives of Taylor Trade Publishing were passing through Dallas, stopped by Bratton’s studio, saw samples of her work, and asked her if she had ever thought about doing a book. A few weeks after that fateful visit, Bratton signed a book contract and her publishing career was underway.

MORE THAN JUST A PHOTOGRAPHER
Bratton, who is also an advocate for children, donates her time and services to charitable organizations such as the March of Dimes and Children’s Advocacy, which provides legal defense, medical care and psychological counseling to battered children. She has also helped develop public service campaigns to prevent abuse and Shaken Baby Syndrome.

Additionally, Bratton contributes her services to more than 40 schools every year in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, donating portrait packages to auctions furthering the needs of education.

“I know I’m a photographer,” Bratton says, “but photography is pretty much second nature to me now. I honestly believe my real skill is working with preverbal babies, and being able to work with them without them really being able to understand what’s going on.

“Photographing babies is much different than photographing grownups,” Bratton continues. “Being able to get a two-year-old who walks in the door, kicks me in the shin, and says ‘no,’ to do everything I’d like them to do, to cooperate fully and hug me and love me, that’s my talent, not taking pictures.”

Although heavily influenced by the work of many other photographers, as well as her background in painting and art, it is Bratton’s internally generated non-stop striving for excellence that she credits most for her style and success.

“I think what I have learned from the photographers I’ve worked with,” she admits, “is the persistence of perfection. Whether you make money or don’t make money, you’ve got to just do it right no matter what. It has become very expensive to do this,” she admits, “and I’ve been very fortunate to be able to raise my prices to cover that, but sometimes I’ll pay a lab three or four times for a print. If it’s not right, it’s not right, and I don’t care if the lab tells me they’ve done all the redos they would normally do or I’m getting a little persnickety, I’ll still pay for it again because it doesn’t matter. It has to be right.”

Stacy Dail Bratton’s web site is www.stacybratton.com/.

Larry Singer lives in South Florida. “Just Hearts” in Delray Beach, Florida, is currently featuring and marketing his hearts. He has three online displays of his work. To see more of his art, or to contact him, go to: homepage.mac.com/larrysinger/PhotoAlbum8.html