Today we’d like to introduce you to Jack Denlinger.
Jack, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I grew up with an engineer father, who always wanted to own a photo studio. He would hang lights in our house and take photos of models from various agencies in the Houston area in the 60’s and 70’s. Unfortunately, he passed away prior to my freshman year of college. I went to the University of Texas receiving a degree in Photojournalism. I studied with Ansel Adams one summer and wanted to be a fine art photographer – I ended up working for a commercial photographer out of college, an association magazine in Austin and was the staff photographer for Compaq Computers.
When they were going through their transition (I was laid off LOL with the closure of our department), we opened our studio in 1994 specializing in Senior Portraits. We do multiple schools in Montgomery County and try to keep it fun and crazy for the seniors. We also do families, dogs, weddings etc. The studio is owned by my wife and I. I am the only photographer, my wife takes care of the financial side of things and kicks me in the tail when needed.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
As with any small business, there are challenges. When we opened the studio we were clueless about how to do it. Coming from a commercial background to a retail environment – it created many challenges. While working at Compaq computer our studio had been a huge grocery store that had closed down, my budget was pretty much unlimited (gravy years of computer mfg.)
We opened our studio in a strip center with definitely a budget that wasn’t infinite (3 children to feed). Our town already had a photographer that kind of had the town wrapped up, fortunately for us he had a personality that could be described as Satanic at times (the artist is God syndrome). I think I’m a pretty nice guy and it seemed to resonate with people in the area. The other photographer is no longer in business.
Along the way we’ve had bumps – for a couple of years when digital photography became very popular – everyone was a professional photographer – it cut into our business a bit, but things seemed to have come back from that, clients have decided that you end up getting what you pay for. Aunt Sally or Uncle Pete’s prints from Walgreens don’t always look that great.
Please tell us about imaginLIGHT photography.
We are a photography studio, specializing in Senior Portraits. We also do various school photography jobs along with family, bridal and children photography. I’m most proud that we can hold our heads up high and have a reputation of nice guys that take great photos. We try and give back to the community and really connect with our clients. The greatest compliment that I ever received was from a Senior boy – he said: “that was great fun, I wish I wasn’t graduating so I could do it again!”
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Probably keep it as we’ve done it, possibly taken a Photoshop class earlier on! Proud of the business and know that I can sleep at night with the way we’ve run it.
Contact Info:
- Address: 804 W. Dallas, Suite 5 Conroe, TX 77301
- Website: imaginlightphotography.com
- Phone: (936)756-4443
- Email: imlight@consolidated.net
- Facebook: Jack Denlinger’s imaginlightphotography
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