BusinessReport.com

Position: Owner

Company: Luckett Portrait Studio

What he does: Operates an upscale photography business

Revenues: Around $400,000

Next goal: To move her business in other directions, such as photo retouching and selling oil paintings based on photographs.

Jill Luckett has transitioned her 52-year-old family business from a portrait studio that specialized in shooting school photographs to a fine art business.

She owns the Luckett Portrait Studio, which was founded by her father John “Jack” Luckett in 1956. Luckett became involved with the business in the mid-1980s after her father became ill.

After a brief transition, she started to take over operations. While she was comfortable with photography, the business side was new for her. Luckett admits to feeling “very stressed” because she was dealing with the newness of running a business, commuting to Baton Rouge from Mandeville and raising three young children.

Eventually, Luckett says she became comfortable after she became familiar with the business. She then started to change what the business did, to make the company more specialized. The studio was well known for shooting school photos, but she shifted to taking private portraits.

She hasn’t entirely abandoned the school business; about 40% to 50% of her work comes from parents wanting nice senior portraits. “From January on, we’re booked solid until May,” she says. But unlike other photographers, Luckett steers clear of wedding business, preferring to leave her weekends free for her family.

Along with changing the business, Luckett moved her studio from Cora Drive just south of Florida Boulevard into a new, high-profile location on Bluebonnet Boulevard in 2003. “I was very blessed to have this location,” she says. “It was one of the first things built in the overlay zone.” Luckett and her sister, Daria, spent nearly a year renovating the property and the building that sits on it, investing nearly $450,000.

Luckett says her business works to give customers something extra because inexpensive, readily available digital cameras and computer programs have convinced so many people they’re photographers. People come from all across Louisiana and as far away as Atlanta to get their portraits taken.

She’ll spend two or three hours shooting photos and then there’s more work to be done. One of the services she offers is “oil veiling,” where a painting is done over a photograph; the resulting effect mixes realism and dreaminess.

“We take a photo,” she says, “and do things with it that are way beyond Photoshop.”