Today we’d like to introduce you to Chelsea Morris.
Hi Chelsea, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
The Story Behind Chelsea Mitchell Photography
When people ask how I became a photographer, they’re often expecting a single defining moment—a camera for Christmas, a high school photography class, or one person who inspired me along the way.
The truth is, I don’t remember a time when photography wasn’t part of who I was.
I grew up in Great Bend, Kansas, carrying little point-and-shoot film cameras everywhere I went. I loved the anticipation of finishing a roll of film and waiting to see what came back from the lab. Long before I understood aperture or composition, I understood that photographs mattered. They had the power to hold onto moments that would otherwise slip away.
One of the greatest influences in my life was photographer Dale Riggs. Dale photographed my baby pictures, my family, and eventually my senior portraits. As I grew older, he welcomed me into his studio, taught me how to use a camera, introduced me to the darkroom, and encouraged me to dream beyond what I thought was possible. He was the one who suggested I attend Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California.
So, just after graduating from high school, I packed everything I owned and moved across the country.
Brooks Institute gave me a strong technical foundation, but some of my greatest education happened outside the classroom.
During my final year, I began interning with José Villa, whose work had inspired me long before we met. After graduating, José offered me a full-time position. Although those plans ultimately changed, he remained invested in my growth as a photographer and introduced me to Elizabeth Messina.
Working with Elizabeth gave me the opportunity to experience another distinctive artistic voice and approach to serving clients. I assisted on weddings and worked in her studio, gaining a different perspective on both the creative and business sides of photography.
Later, José Villa and Joel Serrato created an opportunity for me to continue working with both of their businesses. From 2011 through 2013, my days were a blend of everything that makes a photography business run. I assisted on weddings and editorial projects, designed heirloom wedding albums, worked in the office, prepared client orders, and supported the countless details happening behind the scenes. It was an apprenticeship in every sense of the word.
Looking back, I’m grateful that my education wasn’t limited to what happened with a camera in my hands. I learned that creating meaningful photographs is only one part of serving people well. The experience a client has—from the first conversation to the finished artwork they hold in their hands—is just as important. Those lessons continue to shape the way I run my business today.
Those years also led to opportunities I never could have imagined as a young woman from Kansas. Before returning home to Kansas, I had the opportunity to photograph one of Oprah’s Mother’s Day brunches, edit imagery from the Vanity Fair Oscars Red Carpet, and work on projects for one of the country’s most influential entrepreneurs.
Returning home didn’t mean leaving those opportunities behind. While my studio has become known for photographing babies, children, families, and weddings, I’ve continued to enjoy editorial and commercial work that has allowed me to tell stories in different ways. Over the years, I’ve photographed magazine covers and feature stories, collaborated with organizations across Kansas, documented conservation efforts, worked on statewide and national campaigns, and continued returning to Santa Barbara to photograph weddings in the place where my professional journey began.
My work has been featured in publications including Style Me Pretty, Wedding Chicks, Wedding Nouveau Magazine, and Modern Wedding Australia, with one of my images also appearing in an online feature for Martha Stewart Weddings. While those opportunities have been incredibly meaningful, they’ve never been the goal. They’ve simply been milestones along a career built on curiosity, relationships, and a genuine love for telling people’s stories.
Looking back, those experiences weren’t important because of the names attached to them. They were important because they broadened my perspective and reinforced a belief that has stayed with me ever since: excellence isn’t found in one extraordinary moment. It’s built through intention, consistency, and care in the ordinary moments that happen every day.
In November 2016, I purchased the Allen Building in downtown Great Bend. Restoring the building became a labor of love and a meaningful investment in the community that had shaped me. For a time, it also served as my studio while the renovation was underway.
Then, in 2021, life came full circle.
A few months after my oldest son, Warren, was born, Dale let me know he was planning to retire and sell his studio. The same photographer who had documented my childhood, encouraged my dreams, and first taught me how to see the world through a camera was ready to pass the torch.
Purchasing his studio remains one of the greatest honors of my career.
Every day I unlock the door to a place that played a role in shaping who I am—not only as a photographer, but as a person. It’s a reminder that sometimes the people who inspire us at the beginning of our journey become part of its most meaningful chapters.
Today, my work looks different than it did when I first entered the industry.
The longer I’ve been a photographer, the less interested I’ve become in simply delivering digital files. My own experience as a wife and mother has only deepened my appreciation for how quickly life changes. Children grow. Parents age. Ordinary moments quietly become family history.
I don’t believe my job is simply to create beautiful photographs.
I believe my job is to help families preserve what matters most.
That’s why my work is centered around creating heirloom artwork—framed portraits, albums, and pieces that become part of a family’s everyday life rather than another forgotten folder on a hard drive.
When I think back to the little girl carrying a film camera through Great Bend, I realize she was chasing the very same thing I am today.
Not perfect photographs.
But lasting memories.
If there’s one thing my journey has taught me, it’s that photographs aren’t just about documenting our lives. They become part of our family’s story. It’s a privilege I never take for granted, and one I hope to pass on to every family who trusts me with theirs.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
One of the biggest challenges in my career came from realizing that the life I had built in California wasn’t necessarily sustainable for me long-term.
Santa Barbara is an incredibly beautiful place to live and work, but it is also a very saturated photography market. I was surrounded by talented photographers, and building a sustainable business in that environment required constantly finding ways to distinguish myself. I loved the work and the community, but there was also a lot of pressure to keep up with an industry that was changing quickly.
At the same time, I was dealing with health challenges that eventually began influencing the decisions I could make professionally. There was a period when I needed to prioritize stability and access to health insurance, which meant stepping outside of the path I had originally envisioned for myself and taking jobs that provided benefits. That was humbling. Photography had been such a central part of my identity and career that temporarily stepping away from relying on it as my primary source of income was difficult.
As my health challenges continued, it became increasingly clear that I needed a different pace and a different environment. Eventually, I made the decision to move back to Great Bend.
Coming home wasn’t an easy reset button. I had spent years building a career in California, and suddenly I was trying to rebuild a photography business in a much smaller community. There are far fewer people to photograph, fewer large-scale creative opportunities, and a very different market. I had to figure out how to take everything I had learned in California and make it work in a place that was completely different.
There were definitely moments when I wondered if I had taken a step backward.
But eventually I realized I hadn’t lost the career I had built. I had gained the opportunity to build something that was actually my own.
Since returning home, I’ve continued to photograph families and weddings, travel back to California for work, and take on editorial and commercial projects ranging from agriculture and conservation to magazine features and political campaign work. I’ve also had the opportunity to build a studio and a business around a philosophy that is much more personal to me now.
The biggest lesson has probably been that a career doesn’t always move in a straight line. Sometimes you have to step away from the version of success you thought you wanted in order to figure out what actually matters to you.
For me, coming home ultimately wasn’t the end of my career. It gave me the opportunity to redefine it.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Today, I primarily specialize in portrait photography—families, motherhood, babies, children, seniors, and milestone portraits—as well as a select number of weddings and editorial and commercial projects. My work is rooted in storytelling, but with a very intentional, timeless aesthetic. I want my photographs to feel beautiful today without feeling tied to a particular trend ten or twenty years from now.
I’m probably best known for creating portraits that feel polished and artistic while still feeling like the people in them. I love beautiful light, thoughtful styling, and creating an image that could live on a wall, but I don’t want the pursuit of a beautiful photograph to come at the expense of genuine connection. Especially with children and families, I’m looking for those little moments that reveal who people actually are.
One of the things I’m most proud of is the experience I’ve built around the photography itself. My business has evolved into what I call an artwork-first approach. Rather than treating the digital gallery as the final product, I help my clients think about how they want their photographs to live in their homes. We design framed portraits, albums, and collections that are meant to become part of their family’s history.
That philosophy comes from how I was originally trained. I began my career in the film era, when there was a physical process between taking a photograph and delivering it to a client. I learned to value the photograph not just as an image on a screen, but as something tangible that could be held, displayed, and passed down. After watching the industry become increasingly focused on digital files and instant gratification, I found myself wanting to bring some of that intentionality back.
I think my experience is also somewhat unusual because my career has allowed me to work across very different types of photography. I’ve photographed families and weddings, but I’ve also worked on editorial and commercial projects involving agriculture, conservation, political campaigns, magazines, and national organizations. I’ve worked in California and Kansas as well as an host of other states and continue to travel for select assignments. All of those experiences have taught me how to walk into very different environments and quickly find the story.
But what I’m most proud of isn’t any particular publication, client, or assignment.
It’s that I’ve been able to build a photography career that feels increasingly aligned with what I believe photography is for.
We’re living in a time when we can take thousands of photographs without ever printing one. I think there’s something powerful about slowing down and deciding which moments are worth preserving. My goal is to create photographs that don’t simply remind people what their family looked like at a particular age, but remind them what this season of their life felt like.
That’s ultimately what sets my work apart. I’m not interested in creating photographs simply to fill a gallery. I want to create something meaningful enough that a family still cares about it decades from now.
Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
Since I don’t actually live in Kansas City, I want to be careful not to answer as though I do. My studio is in Great Bend, Kansas, but I have the opportunity to work in Kansas City periodically, and I’ve really come to appreciate the city from that perspective.
What I love most about Kansas City is its creative energy. The arts community is well developed, and there are so many opportunities to connect, collaborate, and grow as an artist and small business owner. Coming from a much smaller Kansas community, I really value having access to that kind of creative ecosystem when I’m in Kansas City.
I also love the historic architecture and the way so many neighborhoods and buildings have been revitalized. As a photographer, I’m always looking at light, texture, history, and environment, and Kansas City has an incredible visual character. There are so many beautiful backdrops for portraits and editorial work.
I don’t spend enough time in Kansas City to have a meaningful “least favorite” aspect of the city. The only challenge I notice as someone coming in for work is that it can be difficult to navigate such a large creative community and find your people. There is so much happening that it can take time to build genuine connections. But I think that’s also part of what makes the city exciting.
Great Bend is a very different experience, and it’s the place I call home. What I love most about living and working here is the sense of community and history. It’s small enough that relationships really matter. I’ve photographed generations of families, worked with local businesses and organizations, and had the opportunity to tell stories about the people and places that make this part of Kansas special.
There are certainly challenges to running a creative business in a smaller community. There aren’t as many built-in creative resources, large commercial clients, or networking opportunities, and the market is very different from a city like Kansas City or Santa Barbara. I’ve had to be more creative about creating my own opportunities and sometimes travel to find the work that stretches me creatively.
But that challenge has also become one of the things I value most. I don’t have to live in a major creative market to make meaningful work. I can build relationships here, photograph families here, contribute to my community here, and still travel when an opportunity takes me somewhere else.
In some ways, I think having both perspectives has been a gift. Kansas City gives me access to a larger creative community and new ideas, while Great Bend gives me the relationships, history, and sense of place that make me want to keep building my business here.
Pricing:
- Wedding collections: beginning at $5,000
- Signature Sessions: $300
- Custom wall collections: beginning at $995
- • Framed artwork: beginning at $225
- • Digital image collections: beginning at $495
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.chelseamitchellphoto.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chelseamitchellphoto
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1ERAzKFC8E/?mibextid=wwXIfr
- Other: https://www.chelseamitchellblog.com
