Michael Broyles Photography’s ‘10th’ at Renaissance
Michael Broyles has been capturing memories for families at Michael Broyles Photography in Renaissance | Farragut for 10 years.
He creates once-in-a-lifetime memories, using light and shadow to bring the infant, child or grandmother to the forefront as a three-dimensional image in print.
Broyles’ studio has been located at 12748 Kingston Pike since October 2007. “Time’s passed very quickly,” he said. “It’s really been neat making friends with so many people and capturing memories for them.”
Michael Broyles Photography primarily is a family portrait studio. “I see myself as a print portrait artist,” he said. “I don’t take pictures; I create memories, and in creating memories, I believe they have to be preserved in print. I sit down and visit with [customers] and ask what kind of story they want to tell in the way of a family portrait or a single child’s portrait or an event.”
Broyles is one of four Certified Professional Photographers in the Knox County area and a member of Professional Photographers of America. To achieve the CPP designation, a photographer has to take a written test.
“You must know a lot of physics because that’s what photography is — creating art with light and using light to take a two-dimensional image and have it appear as a three-dimensional image,” he said.
Studio hours are from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Tuesday through Friday, or by appointment 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
While Broyles has been doing photography since he was a teenager, photographing professionally did not start until 15 years ago.
He spent 25 years wandering around the world before he retired in 1998 as director of personnel from the U.S. Army Chaplaincy Reserves, where he was an active duty chaplain managing Reserve chaplains.
After retiring, he moved from St. Louis to Tellico Village. Then in 2002, he took photography a step further.
“I ended up moving from film to digital and was giving my digital products away,” Broyles said, “and folks said, ‘You ought to sell these.’”
So, he went to Debi Tuttle, owner of The Town Framery, then known as Mary Wilbourne’s Gallery. Tuttle framed some of Broyles works and asked him to hang up some of his prints in the shop’s gallery. “So, she was a big emphasis on me turning professional,” Broyles said.
At first he was photographing trees and flowers, then selling the cards and prints — but he made the jump to photographing people in 2002 after attending a class at a Professional Photographers of America Conference.
His business started as Broyles Renderings in 2002, when he worked out of his home for two years and in a Tellico Village studio for three years. For more information, call 865-777-5683 or visit www.mbroylesphotography.com.
