Shelley B Photography has appeared on the cover of Pensacola Magazine 5 times and in the Wall Street Journal. Now serving families in Gulf Shores, Orange Beach, Fort Morgan & Perdido Key.
Five times. That's how many times a Shelley B Photography image has appeared on the cover of Pensacola Magazine.
Magazine covers are selected from an enormous pool of candidates. Editors are looking for images with immediate visual impact — photographs that stop you in the aisle at the grocery store, that make you reach out and pick up the magazine before you've read a single word. Getting one cover is a significant achievement. Getting five reflects something sustained — a consistent standard of work that editorial teams keep returning to.
We share this not to position ourselves above other photographers, but because we think families deserve to know who they're working with when they're trusting someone with their family's images.
Shelley B Photography serves families across the Alabama Gulf Coast and into the Florida Panhandle:
Gulf Shores, Alabama is our home base and where the majority of our sessions take place. We know these beaches the way a studio photographer knows their studio — every stretch of sand, every angle of light, every condition at every time of year.
Orange Beach, Alabama sits just east of Gulf Shores with slightly quieter stretches of beach and that extraordinary emerald-green water color the area is famous for. Some of our most beautiful sessions have happened on Orange Beach, particularly in the quieter spots near Perdido Pass.
Fort Morgan, Alabama is our favorite location for extended families and reunion groups. The open, undeveloped peninsula has beaches that feel genuinely wild and unobstructed — perfect for the sweeping panoramic images that become statement wall art.
Perdido Key, Florida crosses the state line into Florida's western Panhandle. The water here has extraordinary color and the beaches are quieter than anywhere in Gulf Shores or Orange Beach. For families staying on Perdido Key, we're one of the few photographers in this area with genuine local knowledge of the coastline.
The images that have appeared on the cover of Pensacola Magazine and in the Wall Street Journal were made with the same equipment, the same approach, and the same team that shows up to your family's session.
Every session is photographed on a Hasselblad medium format camera at 100 megapixels — the same system trusted by the world's leading portrait and editorial photographers. Every session includes two photographers: Shelley for composed, classic portraits, and Blaine for candid moments and creative angles at different focal lengths. Every session gets its own dedicated golden hour — we never double-book a sunset.
And every session comes to you. We drive to your vacation rental — your beach house, your condo, your Fort Morgan property — and we bring our full setup directly to your doorstep. You step outside. We go to the beach. The session unfolds from there.
The press recognition is meaningful to us, but it's not the metric we care about most. The metric we care about most is whether families look at their gallery and feel something — whether the images we make reflect what their family actually is, not just what they looked like on a particular evening.
We hear regularly from clients that the images we delivered brought them to tears. That the candid photo Blaine caught — the one nobody posed for, the one that happened at the edge of a setup while Shelley was working with the group — became the image they printed large and hung in their home. That the panoramic of their whole family against the Gulf horizon is the most beautiful photograph they've ever owned.
That's the standard we hold ourselves to. The press coverage reflects it. But the gallery your family receives is proof of it.
We photograph families year-round across Gulf Shores, Orange Beach, Fort Morgan, and Perdido Key. Sessions are scheduled at golden hour, and we come directly to your rental property.
Summer and holiday sessions fill well in advance — often months ahead for peak weeks in July and August. Fall sessions (September and October especially) offer beautiful light with better availability. If you're planning a Gulf Coast trip, reach out as early as possible to secure your date.
Got questions? We're here to chat.
