Who we are
UdarPhoto is a part of Udar Service Group, Inc., a family-owned business based in the Louisville, Kentucky area. (Technically, our primary address is across the county line in Spencer county.)
Our lead photographer is Mike O’Mara, a commercial photographer with many years of experience. How many years? Well, let’s just say Mike started his career working with film, long before digital cameras were available. He has been a photographer and manager at studios in Louisville, Nashville, and St. Louis; and he authored the book Exposure and Lighting for Digital Photographers Only (under the pen name Michael Meadhra). Mike has also been a college instructor, teaching Graphic and Web Design.
Mike’s daughter, Erin, works with the family business too. She is a skilled photographer in her own right and takes the lead on some projects, but more often contributes her skills as an assistant, stylist, and image retoucher. Erin is our resident Photoshop wizard. She is also a teacher, currently in the Graphic Design department at a local university.
Mike and Erin were both certified by Google as Trusted Independent Photographers in 2012, shortly after the Google Business Photo program (now called Google Street View for Business) emerged from beta test phase and was offered to businesses across the country.
Besides Mike and Erin, UdarPhoto has access to several skilled freelancers for those times when additional staff is needed.
In addition to photography, Udar Service Group offers Graphic Design, Web Design, and Accounting services. The accounting component may seem like a strange addition, but that’s what happens when one member of the family is a Certified QuickBooks Pro Adviser.
Our Approach
At UdarPhoto, our philosophy is best summed up by paraphrasing Ansel Adams: “We don’t take photos, we make them.”
We do most of our photography “on-location”. We bring our photographic equipment to your location instead of you bringing your products or people to our studio. We keep our overhead low by not having to pay rent on a large studio space or storefront in an expensive commercial location. (We do have a modestly-sized studio in a former workshop on our property. It provides a good working space for small projects, but lacks amenities for hosting clients.) Lower overhead means we can charge very reasonable rates, so you get top quality results without paying top dollar.
A lot of our photographic subjects are places (architectural and real estate photography) and Google tours, where there is no need for a studio. We use specialized lenses, techniques (such as HDR photography), and software to create panoramas and beautifully detailed still images with proper perspective.
For products and people, we bring the studio to you with portable lighting and backdrops. We can set up a mini-studio in a conference room, the corner of a warehouse, or the overflow space in a restaurant. We can shoot your photos with full “studio lighting”, then pack up our gear, and leave the space the way we found it. Of course, we can also shoot products and people (especially people) in their natural habitat, such as a home, office, or park, using (mostly) natural light.
UdarPhoto delivers top quality digital images. We start with careful setup to ensure the best camera angle and lighting. Then we use professional best practices to capture and process the images to bring out all the detail. But we don’t stop there. We use our Photoshop expertise for post-processing, retouching, and compositing to create stunning images. Finally, we deliver high-resolution image files.
We don’t sell packages of prints as the final product. Instead, we deliver digital images along with a copyright release that allows you full use of the images, and you can get prints made where ever you want. If you want us to assist you with getting prints from a commercial lab or printer, we’ll be glad to do so. We charge only a small fee for the time we spend handling the order. We don’t add a mark up to the cost of every print.