Plymouth photographer makes mark with low-tech approach

Written by

Matt Jachman

In an era of instant gratification and digital everything, Joan Meyers’ photography sets her apart.

Meyers, a portrait photographer who last month opened a studio in downtown Plymouth, favors black and white rather than color and, perhaps more unusual, works with film rather than in a newer digital format.

“It’s the perfect medium for me. It matches my personality,” Meyers, of Plymouth Township, said Monday in her second-floor studio on Forest, upstairs from the boutique Birchwood.

Black and white, she said, gives photographs a contemplative, timeless quality better suited to capturing emotion and personality, while film offers more variation in tones and a grainy look that appeals to her more than the just-too-perfect digital.

“Not everybody likes this type of photography,” said Meyers, who joked that she was born in the wrong decade. “Some people pick up on it right away.”

Meyers started out in photography as a hobbyist using film, then made the switch to digital, along with most other photographers, when that format became dominant. But she was drawn back to film and to shooting portraits in black and white. She’ll also shoot in color, she said, to give clients a choice, but it’s in black and white that she’s making her mark.

Working professionally for seven years, Meyers specializes in family portraits: mother and child, siblings, whole families. She also offers hand-coloring of black and white photos; the finely detailed portraits of classic houses (including one of a large brick house in Plymouth) that adorn her studio have an old-fashioned colorized look from the days before color prints became commonplace.

Meyers can develop her own film and make prints at home, but usually sends out portraiture work to a lab in California. Final prints are made on archival-quality fiber paper; printed photographs, she mused, are a medium that’s likely to outlast the computer discs and flash drives on which people now store their family photos.

Most of her portraits are done in subjects’ homes – it’s there that clients are most likely to be themselves, she said – but photo shoots can also be done in her studio, which has white walls, a dark wood floor and lots of natural light.

Meyers said film sometimes piques the curiosity of young people who grew up with digital photos and that there seems to be a resurgent interest in film. There are even Photoshop options, she said, designed to give digital photos a film-like look.

“It’ll never be what it was before,” Meyers said of film, “and that’s OK.”

Meyers’ husband Bob works for Chevron Oil, while son Nate, 20, is a college student and daughter Erin, 18, is college-bound. Their youngest, Peter, is 11.

Joan M. Photography can be reached at 734-386-0505; the website is http://joanmphotography.com/. Meyers is currently collecting new blankets (store-bought or hand-made) for Project Night Night, which distributes blankets and stuffed animal toys to children who have to leave their homes suddenly because of emergencies or dangerous conditions. See her website for details.