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.

We have always had a strong passion for imagery that was relaxed and natural - our goal is that the image shows more of the person being themselves and less of them looking like they were posed by a photographer. Our idea of portraiture is somewhat unorthodox as we consider portraits not just those images that we take during a "session", but also those images we take at the altar, on the court, or on the field. Whatever one is doing, our goal is to make every image we take a portrait of someone being themselves, with real emotion and real expressions.

An example of this is our volleyball photography. We are known for our niche photographic specialty of this sport. Every year, the family spends a great deal of time travelling and photographing volleyball, meeting athletes and families and generally working the sort of hours that only the truly dedicated (or truly insane!) work. We travel throughout the continental US - up and down the Pacific coast and even out to Denver, Indianapolis and Atlanta - as well as to Europe and out to Hawaii. Our goal is to create portrait quality images of volleyball action and it is for this that we have become most well known. We maintain a completely separate site just for our volleyball work an it can be seen at: www.vbpics.com

However, in spite of being widely known as volleyball photographers, the fact is that we were portrait photographers first and we remain portrait photographers - we just happen to make portraits during all sorts of activities, be it sports, weddings, family outings ...