December 2019

Our team at Exum Photography wishes you peace, joy and prosperity throughout the coming year. Thank you for your continued support and friendship. We hope you enjoy the Exum Family Christmas card and keep a check on our website and blog in the coming year.

Merry Christmas from the Exums

Our studio is excited to present the 2019 Exum Family Christmas Card. Every year Molly, Bella, Sawyer, my studio team and I struggle to settle on the idea for our card. This idea began for me with a simple concept of having everything in white. I wanted our clothes in white, the setting in white and possibly just pops of color. We like adventure and we are planning to go skiing soon so Molly and I tossed around the idea of skiing down a mountain. I had a very rough idea in my head. I reached out to my friend Rob Edwards of Prairie Dog Illustrations who is a talented graphic designer and superb illustrator to put my idea into a sketch. I’ve included Rob’s original sketch in this post. Rob nailed it with the avalanche theme. I worked on sourcing props and clothing and we set a date to shoot this in the studio. Two days before the shoot there were NO Christmas trees for sale yet in Burlington. So the day before the shoot I drove up to West Jefferson and sourced a tree in the dark of night. The rest of this story is best told in these photos and Molly’s thoughtful prose on the back of the card. Please note, many of you received a hard copy in the mail. If you have the hard copy in hand, I challenge you to spot the spelling error. It’s glaring and we’ll I’m embarrassed and beg you forgive the miss. In the chaos of getting this card to the printer and the MOUNTAIN of other responsibilities knocked out this month we totally missed a pretty important central word in the message. Challenge is set. Try to find it. You’re welcome to publicly humiliate me here as it’s worth a good laugh. You can even screen capture and add to your comments in the post. First one to find it and reveal the misspelled word wins the challenge.

Life is truly an adventure that at times seems uncontrollably chaotic and we just have to hold tight with faith and a sense of humor. Hope this card makes you smile. We are blessed and grateful for friends like you.

From Molly … “Sometimes it feels like everything is coming at us all at once. We have a mountain of responsibilities, uncertainties, hardships & heartaches we’re dealing with, & we’re all trying to keep that mountain from wiping us out.

In the middle of the mayhem, Steve & I are grateful for the adventure in each new day, the beauty & wonder of this world, for precious time spent with family & friends, for hope, for the glorious roller coaster of being parents to 2 teenagers, Bella & Sawyer, & for God’s love & mercy.

May we all seek & find moments of peace, gratitude & joy amid the chaos.

Note: That “moment” on the front of this card was not as peaceful as the picture may seem but we are grateful for the “joyful” banter we shared in the making of this card.

Seek & ye shall find. God Bless & Merry Christmas to All!”

Molly, Steve, Bella, Sawyer & Murphy

Bella Exum – Garland Wrangler
Sawyer Exum – Ribbon Wrangler
Steve Exum –  Photographer & Tree Wrangler
Murphy Exum – Slope Expert
Molly Exum – Poet & Family Wrangler
Rodney Hogan – Assistant Photographer
Rob Edwards – Graphic Designer
Matt Bell – Set Design Assistant
Rafe Grimball – Set Design Assistant
Thank you to Bullet of C&R Outdoor Shop in Elon for supplying ski and snowboard props!

Carolina Eye Prosthetics strives to provide the best eye prosthesis available in the Southeast. Located in Burlington NC, they take great care in properly fitting the prosthesis and hand painting it to match its companion eye. Carolina Eye Prosthetics can fabricate a prosthesis to fit comfortably over an existing blind eye (a corneal scleral shell) and provide other prostheses such as custom conformers for those too young to be fitted with their first artificial eye.

Exum Photography had the privilege of working with Carolina Eye Prosthetics on their 2019 Christmas Card. This holiday marketing piece goes to all of their referring medical professionals. We began with the beloved Christmas story of the Polar Express which has captured imaginations for decades. Our studio partnered with illustrator Rob Edwards of Praire Dog Productions who took an idea conceived by photographer Steve Exum and created a mock-up. The staff from Carolina Eye Prosthetics helped source wardrobe and props. Makeup artists Herita Jones and Jennifer McCollom contributed their magic on the day of the shoot.

Fifi, the customer greeter dog at Carolina Eye and Murphy, the studio greeter dog at Exum Photography, did their best to keep everyone entertained during the shoot. Each staff member was photographed in costume under lighting designed to mimic the train car that would be surrounding them. After the posed photographs were complete, images were carefully animated by studio graphic designer Rodney Hogan and integrated into our train car image design by illustrator Rob Edwards. The first image above is the front of the holiday card and the second image is the interior. Stay tuned for another holiday card featuring the Exum family that will publish next week.