Behind the Studio

I am a craftsman: the architecture of an heirloom print.

Fine art prints coming off the printer at the AJK Images Dallas studio

I love printing. Every print I make is handcrafted — the tangible, physical version of everything a session is about.

Your photo shoot, the images we capture of you, all transformed into something you can actually hold.

Almost every photograph taken today lives on a screen. It gets scrolled past, backed up, and eventually buried in a folder nobody opens. A print is the opposite of that. It has weight and texture. It hangs somewhere you walk past every morning, or sits in a box you hand to someone across a table.

Loading fine art paper into the printer, AJK Images Dallas

I print on Hahnemühle cotton rag rather than traditional wood-fiber paper. Cotton rag has a softness that coated papers can’t reproduce — blacks sit deeper, skin tones stay warm, and there’s no glare to fight when the light moves across a room.

I also use archival inks, so the colors stay true for 100+ years. Nothing gets sent out to a lab. Every print is made here in the studio, by hand, one at a time, which means if something isn’t right, I’m the one who fixes it.

“You see my soul, Andrew,” is what one client, Ashley, told me the first time she saw one of her prints — one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. Her print hangs at 40x55 inches in a gold frame.

A 40x55 inch fine art portrait print in a gold frame by AJK Images, Dallas

A wall portrait at that size stops being a photograph and starts being a piece of the room. It’s the first thing people notice when they walk in, and it stays on that wall for decades.

Beyond wall portraits, there are Folio Boxes. The boxes themselves are handcrafted in New Zealand, and I fill them with my own prints — up to 25 of your favorite images, each one hand-matted and made here in the studio.

A folio box is a different kind of object. You sit down with it. You pass prints to people one at a time and watch them hold each one, which is something no phone screen has ever managed.

Handcrafted folio box with hand-matted fine art prints, AJK Images Dallas

Nothing compares to seeing these in person, which is exactly the point — a screen can’t show you what cotton rag does to a photograph. I’d love to invite you into the studio for a complimentary print viewing.