Christina Elmore Thompson, local photographer, reflects on winning Business of the Year

PERRY — Christina Elmore Thompson and her business, Christina Elmore Photography, recently won Business of the Year from the Perry Area Chamber of Commerce on Jan. 31. 

She said winning this award from the Chamber truly means the world. 

“Winning something with the Chamber, those are your peers and the people that are building you up in your community, and to know that they were the ones selecting me, it’s an honor,” she said. “I’ve watched so many of them build their businesses, and my role is to help them through that journey, and to get that love back means everything.”

In December of 2024, she also won the 2024 Best of Georgia’s Professional Headshot Photographer Award.

From the beginning, Elmore Thompson always loved art. In high school, she said she spent a lot of her time in the dark room learning on film. 

“I’ve always really loved art and anything in the creative realm,” she said. “I have always loved expression, and once I realized I could capture that, it’s almost like you’re just taking a moment in time, and you’re freezing that memory, whether it’s people or an event or something that’s happened. Being able to tell that story and document it was always really cool to me.”

After high school, Elmore Thompson attended what was then Macon State College, wanting to get a business degree, not knowing what she wanted to do yet. 

“I knew I was ambitious, I knew I loved to learn, but I really had no plan. [Photography] just wasn’t something quite on my radar at that time,” she said. 

Elmore Thompson graduated Summa Cum Laude with a dual degree in Business Management and Information Technology, and a minor in Marketing. While in college, she enrolled in business school and worked as a payroll coordinator, staffing specialist and staffing manager. 

“I loved helping people get jobs, but I just didn’t feel like it was right where I needed to be. I was helping people, but not in the way that I wanted to help people,” she said. 

Elmore Thompson always loved photography and loved the aspects of empowering her subjects. 

“I just really enjoyed seeing a transformation for someone, where I can take them where they’re shaking when they walk in the door and they don’t feel confident because they don’t know what they’re doing. Then, seeing a transformation within an hour or two hours, where that person is just so confident at the end, that they’re saying ‘when can we do the next one?’,” she said. “That’s truly rewarding to me, because I feel like I’ve made such a positive impact on someone.”

Wanting to pursue the field full time, she received a lot of encouragement from her husband. 

“I had about six months worth of savings saved up, and he was like, just try it. And had he never said that to me, I probably never would have done it,” she said. “He is such a huge part of that journey for me, because he’s so supportive.”

She rented out a space in Savannah from 2016-2019 due to the city having a bigger creative market. At the end of 2019, Elmore Thompson received word about a studio in Perry known as Ball Street Studios, owned at the time by Dustin Cole. 

In March of 2020, she and her friend Anna Daniels, a fellow photographer who she knew from a previous staffing job, got a call from Cole. He needed two residents for the studio. Ten years prior, both Elmore Thompson and Daniels asked themselves what it would be like to open a studio in Downtown Perry. 

“We talk about that journey together, and it’s really crazy how things can turn out. You never know the impact that someone’s going to make, or that one connection you might make, what that’s going to be down the road,” she said. 

According to Elmore Thompson, her photography business is best described as a wedding, lifestyle and branding photographer, while also focusing on empowerment photography, events and offering a mobile photo booth. Her favorite services are capturing photos for branding and weddings.

“You’re really capturing a moment in somebody’s journey, like getting married, or if it’s them opening their new business. That’s something that’s really important to me,” she said. 

Opening her studios in Savannah and in Perry were big moments in the Middle Georgia native’s career along with being featured in Country Living Magazine for both her Savannah and Perry studios.

“The creative community wasn’t very big here, so that’s why I kind of sought out Savannah,” she said. “But then once I came back here, seeing the thriving community, I would say, probably being a part of that, capturing not just one year’s worth of work, but 10 years worth of work within our own community, is really cool.” 

She also mentioned the difficulty in full-time photography and is very grateful that she does this for a living. 

“I don’t think people understand how much time it takes to be a photographer. If I have to drive an hour to a shoot, I’m on location maybe for three hours, drive an hour home, and that’s already five hours, but it might take me anywhere from 10 to 20 hours just to edit that one session. I don’t know if people understand that aspect,” she said. 

On the business side, Elmore Thompson said you basically run everything in your photography business. From the marketing and HR department, payroll and finances, she does it all. She has also battled medical challenges for most of her life and has worked hard to overcome them. She said that has only made her stronger.

“It’s a really hard thing to do, but I’m so grateful that I get to do it, because I know so many people right now that are photographers that are really struggling,” she said. 

In the photography business, Elmore Thompson said it is really important, from the beginning, to connect with your client on a one-on-one level. 

“I’m very big on helping direct scenes. People always say I have such a keen eye for detail. I’m always going in for those little details,” she said. “I do like the aspect of just spontaneity and maybe just making authentic moments.”

She advised those who want to pursue a career in photography to have faith and avoid discouragement. 

“I think it’s so easy to get so discouraged because we’re kind of like a saturated industry. That’s kind of what people in my industry call it,” she said. “I do feel like if you have the faith in yourself to build those connections and also just to find what it is that you’re really good at.”

A few projects Elmore Thompson is looking forward to include a wedding in Rome, Italy, in 2026, as well as taking her talents to Austin, Texas this year. She said she is also looking to get into the education realm to help small businesses in the form of a podcast. She will also be hosting her first photography workshop in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, this fall.

“My goal in the future is to create an online membership community where I can also teach them the business aspect of running a photography business because a lot of people are creative,” she said. “When it comes to running a business, you really have to have that [business] mindset to be profitable and also have long term growth.”

She said her purpose is to leave more good in the world than what she takes when she leaves.

To learn more about Christina Elmore Photography go to www.christinaelmorephotography.com