Santa Fe fine art
Retirement is a milestone with no rehearsal dinner, so we give it the portrait it deserves: you, in the light Santa Fe painters have chased for a century - adobe walls, cottonwood shade, Canyon Road gold. Gallery prints, museum framing, archival everything.
The retirement portrait
For centuries, the way to mark a career's end was a portrait - painted, serious, expensive. The tradition faded, but the instinct did not: the retiree deserves an object, not a phone full of snapshots from the luncheon.
We make that object with photography instead of paint. One afternoon in the best light in the country, one image chosen carefully, printed archivally and framed by the same workshop that frames for the Canyon Road galleries. It hangs for the rest of your life and then it hangs in someone else's.
Print room
The session ends on a wall, not a hard drive.
Pas de mise en scène : on travaille, on rit, on recommence.
The gallery
01
Owner & photographer
Art-school trained, twenty-two years in Santa Fe. Will discuss light for as long as you let her, and will stop you from scheduling any session at noon, ever.
Sam Lightfoot Photographer
Former large-format landscape photographer who turned to people because, he says, the desert is patient but clients are more interesting. Prints everything himself.
Chloe Nakai Print & framing
Runs the print room and the framing workshop. Explains archival paper in plain English and refuses, gently, to frame anything on the cheap stuff.
Daniel Ortiz Session producer
Scouts locations by season and hour, secures the permissions for the good walls, and keeps water in the vehicle for every session.
Sessions
Start here
One hour on Canyon Road or one high-desert location. Twelve edited images, one 11x14 archival print.
$425 session
$850session
Most booked
Two hours, two locations, wardrobe consult, thirty edited images, and a 16x20 archival print with museum glass.
$1,700four sessions
The full first year
A portrait each season of your first retired year - the plan nobody gives themselves. Four 16x20 prints, one 24x36 centerpiece.
$2,600commission
The patron package
A commissioned sitting at your home or land, printed at scale (30x40 or larger), framed by the gallery workshop, with a small edition of prints for family.
All prices USD; New Mexico gross receipts tax applies. Sessions run year-round - winter light is undersung and we will make the case personally.
How it works
01
Eleanor talks with you - the career, the retirement, where the portrait will live. The conversation shapes the location more than any style quiz.
02
Daniel scouts and Eleanor advises wardrobe: the desert has opinions about color, and we share them in a short guide.
03
Golden hours only - morning or evening, never noon. We move slowly, shoot deliberately, and finish before the light does.
04
Choose the image in our print room with Chloe, where the paper is. Print, frame, hang; the process ends on a wall, not a hard drive.
Client stories
"I retired from the lab after forty-one years and my gift to myself was this session. The 16x20 hangs where the diploma used to. The diploma is in a drawer. No regrets on either count."
Walter B.
retired chemist, 68 (Los Alamos)
"Eleanor refused to photograph me at noon and I have thought about that hourly since. The evening light she chose made me look like a woman who knows things. My grandchildren agree."
Judith M.
retired judge, 71 (Santa Fe)
"The Four Seasons was my wife's idea and our best one in years. Watching her walk into each session more herself than the last - the portraits are a record of a person arriving somewhere."
Robert & Anne C.
first year of retirement, 66 & 64 (Albuquerque)
// Before you book //
Inquire
The career, the date, and whether the portrait is a gift or a self-commission - both are excellent answers.
TEL (505) 555-0198
Hours Tue-Sat 10am-6pm MT