An investment in fine art, not a transaction.
Swartz Portraits is not your school's contracted photographer, and not the generalist who shoots a wedding one weekend, a birthday the next, and senior portraits whenever the schedule allows. We are focused, by choice, on one thing, fine art senior portraiture made by a Master Photographer, and the investment reflects that focus.
Forty years behind the camera, including formative years as a Navy Hollywood Liaison supporting eight major motion pictures and forty-eight television productions. Storytelling is not a metaphor for how Ty photographs. It is the literal craft.
Most families ask about price first. Here it is.
Paid at booking. Secures your date and the full designed experience: up to five hours, up to three locations within a hundred miles, unlimited outfits, the in-home consultation, and the editing of your reveal images.
Most families invest between $2,200 and $4,500 for the wall portraits, albums, prints, and files they choose for their home. Three collections, designed with you in person at your private reveal.
- High-resolution files of every portrait in your collection
- Your complete edited gallery, eighty or more images, as watermarked social-ready files
- Graduation announcements designed from your portraits
- Personal, in-home delivery by Ty
Why the exact number waits for the reveal: a museum-quality print handcrafted in Italy has a weight and a depth no screen can show. You choose your collection with the pieces in your hands and your own walls in view. See the three collections ›
What a fine art session actually involves.
Most photographers pick a location, hope the sun cooperates, have the senior walk around, and take pictures. We do not work that way. Every session is built like a film production, with character, setting, light, and a narrative arc.
- Location scouting. Every location is visited, evaluated, and chosen for what it says about the senior.
- Outfit consultation. Combinations are designed during the in-home consultation around what photographs best in the chosen locations.
- Theme building. The session has a narrative: multiple looks, multiple locations, one cohesive story.
- Full studio lighting on location. Not on-camera flash, not natural light alone. The same professional portrait equipment used in commercial and editorial work.
- The senior's voice. Seniors have a say in what they want. Ty has a say in how their story is told through fine art.
- Personality, not prettiness. The goal is a portrait that captures who your senior actually is.
The fee also covers professional equipment insurance, travel to and from the locations, an assistant on every session, and the software and business overhead behind the work. More importantly, it identifies the families who are serious about the experience. Sessions are limited to 100 a year, and being part of that group is itself part of the value.
The studio comes to you.
For years I ran a traditional studio. When I brought Swartz Portraits to Texas I changed how the business works, on purpose, because ninety-five percent of my families ask for location sessions. So the session happens where your senior's life happens, and the consultation and the reveal happen in your home.
That is not a compromise. When I sit in your living room I can see the wall above the fireplace, the light in the hallway, the space at the top of the stairs. I size and design each portrait for the exact place it will hang, and I deliver it there myself. A studio visit cannot offer that.
GraphiStudio. Twenty-five years. No exceptions.
Heirloom products come from GraphiStudio, the Italian fine art atelier whose work has been chosen by master photographers across thirty countries for over fifty years. Hand-bound. Archival. Designed to last generations.
I have trusted GraphiStudio for nearly twenty-five years. I have watched other companies try to imitate their work, cutting corners on materials, mass-producing what should be handcrafted, skipping quality control. I will not put my name on lesser products. If a GraphiStudio piece ever arrives with a defect, they replace it without question.
Prints for the wall. Files for everything else.
Leonardo da Vinci did not carry the Mona Lisa as a file. He carried the painting itself, and hung it on the wall of every place he stayed. It traveled because it was real, a physical object that meant something to him.
Imagine your senior traveling through life with their portrait on the wall of every home they live in, and one day telling the story to their own children. That is what a fine art portrait is for, and it is why every Swartz Portraits collection is built around the wall.
It is also why the files come with it. Every collection includes the high-resolution digital files of every portrait in it, for reprints, for framing, for keeping. And every family receives the complete edited gallery, eighty or more images, as watermarked social-ready files, so the senior can post the whole session and the graduation announcements are ready to design.
Other photographers sell files instead of prints because files are easier. We include the files because the wall and the feed are not the same thing, and your family deserves both.
"My goal is to make parents use the tissues."
Each senior is unique, and we create until we have the eighty images we know your family will love. When I capture a slight smile or a particular look, the kind only a parent recognizes, those are the frames that matter most. I will not always know I caught it until the reveal, when I watch you see it.
The reveal happens in your home on a weeknight, seven to ten days after the session. Senior portraits are the last full stop before everything changes, and the wall portrait you choose is the one that keeps them prominent in your home for the rest of your lives. That is what a Swartz Portraits collection is designed for.
Two-payment and three-payment plans
Payment plans are discussed at the consultation and structured around what works for your family. Products are not ordered from GraphiStudio in Italy until the collection is paid in full. We never ship work that has not been completed on both sides.
Hand-delivered, never shipped
Once your products arrive from Italy, roughly four to six weeks after the reveal, they are personally inspected and hand-delivered by Ty to your home. Never left at the door. Delivered the way fine art deserves to be received.
You spent eighteen years raising someone extraordinary.
Document this version of them properly. The free in-home consultation is Monday through Friday at 6:00 or 8:00 pm, in your home, with no pressure and no obligation. A real conversation about your senior, the locations they would love, and the heirlooms your family will live with for generations.
Apply for One of 100 Sessionsor ask a question first
Prefer to talk now? Call or text (832) 305-5426 · Read common questions
Consultations and reveals are Monday through Friday at 6:00 or 8:00 pm, by appointment, in your home. Sessions are photographed on Saturdays and Sundays.