Who are we?
We are Micheal Hall Photography, a family business based in Sacramento, CA. Started in 2001 as a way to bring the family together into a common business that they could all enjoy, it has grown steadily each year, now employing three family members full time and several more part time.
The Hall family has a rich history in photography, encompassing three generations - going back to Micheal's grandfather, Thomas, who was an avid amatuer photographer. This interest was passed along to his son, John, who - in his own turn - became a long-time amatuer photographer. It was John who, as a child, Micheal watched process black and white images in the family darkroom. This passion for creating imagery has been passed, generation to generation, and the Halls hope it will continue to be so.
It was during the first year in business that the demand for high quality volleyball photography became apparent. Even though it was never the intention of Micheal or the Hall family to specialize in volleyball photography, from the start volleyball proved to be a joy to photograph - as well as challenge artistically and technically. As their skill in photographing the sport grew, so did their popularity with volleyball associations, parents and athletes.
In spite of the business having Micheal's name, it is very much a family business and currently employs not only Micheal, but John (Father), Joseph (Brother) and Jason (Brother) on a full time basis as well. Additionally, on a part-time basis, Vince (Uncle), Kristina (Sister-In-Law), Erica (Sister-In-Law) and Thomas (Brother) all join in the fun.
There are more Halls in training - Micheal's seven year old daughter, Ryan, already has her own digital camera and is learning the ins and outs of using Photoshop to adjust and enhance images prior to printing. Micheal is looking forward to the day when she too will be courtside to photograph (but, considering how much he has come to enjoy the sport of volleyball, he would much rather she chose to be on the court, rather than beside it!)
All of the Halls really enjoy meeting the many new people encountered throughout the season, and enjoy even more seeing the familiar faces they've gotten to know over the past few seasons.
What we do.
We give parents and athletes something to remember your tournament far longer than they would have otherwise! The enthusiasm for our images and our work is always very surprising, and we constantly get requests for scheduling information - 'Will you be returning to the tournament next year?', 'Can you tell our club which tournaments you will be at?'. Our services can give greater value to your event - use them!
Our Services
We offer services as both a Team & Individual and Action Photography company. We are best known for our tournament action photography capabilities where we photograph as many of the teams/athletes at a tournament as possible and display the images at our onsite, web based viewing booth. Parents and athletes can then look through the images (with no obligation to purchase) and decide if they would like to order enlargements, collages or any of our other items.
The Process
Onsite we photograph, display and sell, but we do not print. By not printing onsite, this allows us to dedicate all of our resources to better servicing our customers at the event - in photography and order taking. Additionally, the amount of work that we do to each an every image to make it look its very best require much more time than we would be able to dedicate onsite. Once the event is finished we then turn all of our attention to using our extensive adjustment techniques to better your images so that they make the best print possible. Once they have been adjusted and proofed, we send them to a professional photographic lab, where they are output as actual photographic prints, at which point we mail them directly to our customers.
Travel
We are more than happy to travel and have photographed extensively throughout California as well as in:
Retaining Our Services
Help us expand that list! If you are interested in having us attend a tournament that you are organizing, we would be happy to speak with you regarding your needs. Please contact us so that we can discuss them.
Misc. Technical Information.
We often get questioned about our gear and how we do things. Unfortunately, we really don't have enough time to answer these questions one on one. So we added this section to our site.
We shoot with Canon Digital gear. More specifically, we currently shoot with EOS 1D, EOS 1DmkII and EOS 1DmkIII bodies. We shoot in RAW+JPG and display the images using a custom web viewing and ordering application which allows us to do things we have found in no other software package. We currently connect 50 viewing stations to that application, with tentative plans to bring our total up to 100.
[The fact that we shoot Canon gear is in no way a statement that only Canon gear will do, nor a recommendation to purchase Canon equipment. We use it and like it a great deal. However, I shot with Nikon equipment for 12 years before the switch and like that gear very much. The switch was made due to the difference lens line-up that Nikon had vs. what Canon had at the time. Largely (in all but one case) the previous gap no longer exists. So good, pro-level Nikon gear should serve just as well. -micheal]
We shoot RAW because there is not only a definite quality advantage, but an advantage of workflow as well, using professional level RAW processing tools and our custom written order management software. We process the RAW files through Bibble and use Neat Image as a noise reduction tool where needed. However, we shoot with fast, fixed focal length lenses (the 85mm 1.8, 135mm 2.0 and 200mm 1.8 to be specific) to help keep our ISOs down and avoid noise issues as much as possible. We never shoot action with on camera flash. And, if you shoot with us, neither will you!
Every image is custom cropped, color balanced, retouched and burned/dodged to make it the most dynamic and dramatic image possible. (This includes the team and individual images we take). We have a set of custom, in-house created Photoshop actions to help speed our retouching work, but final work is still individually tailored to the needs of each image.
We output through a long established, professional photo lab as actual photographs, because we have found that is what our customers want and it is more efficient to have a lab do the printing, trimming and shipping than to do it in-house.
Our quality is extremely important to us and we do everything we can to push it to the highest level possible.
The fact that we shoot more than 250,000 frames per year and have custom created the systems to organize, process, display and offer for ordering our imagery and products astounds many who work in this field. The further fact that we do so shooting RAW+JPG and then hand process every RAW file before printing further leads to the conclusion that we're nuts! That's a distinction we accept with more than a little bit of pride.