45 years of creating memories, bringing out beauty

Matthew Day

Staff

June 16, 2025

MOUNT CALVARY – Though the essence of her craft is to capture moments, Mary Gueller said her 45 years of co-owning Gueller’s Photography have flown by. 

“Time travels very, very fast,” she said. “It doesn’t seem that long. All of a sudden, it just happened.” 

In a proverbial camera flash, Mary said she’s seen her Fond du Lac County-based business grow and evolve since she and her husband Steve took up professional photography in 1980. 

Steve has since retired, she said, and their son Ryan has ably stepped into co-ownership with her, as part of a team of several staff. 

Mary said what began as a hobby for the married couple would blossom into studio ownership and eventually full-time careers. 

Now, even with the prevalence and lowering price points of high-resolution cameras, she said Gueller’s Photography continues to succeed based on the team’s decades of experience and education – well pre-dating photography’s digitization – as well as their knack for putting subjects at ease before the cameras start snapping. 

“We (photograph) a lot of high school seniors (and) families,” Mary said. “We do weddings, business photos, corporate and then we also do underclass school photography and sports photography.” 

Working primarily in mid-eastern Wisconsin, whether on location or at the studio (203 Kommers St., Mount Calvary), she said the key to Gueller’s Photography has been serving its “wonderful, loyal customers.” 

“We have so many repeat customers, and I think that is the basis of our existence,” Mary said. “And, after you watch families grow and they keep bringing themselves back to our studio for creating memories – that’s just such a mainstay.” 

Shooting their shot 

Mary said Gueller’s Photography began as a passion project for her and Steve. 

“We enjoyed photographing, and we thought, ‘Well, this would be a wonderful way to create memories for other people as well,’” she said. “So, we started taking classes, and we joined the Professional Photographers of America and took classes through that.” 

The couple also joined the Wisconsin Professional Photographers Association, Mary said, and met monthly with their new peers as they began to work in the field part-time. 

“We started photographing weddings, and probably did that for two years before we added any of the portrait business into it,” she said. “Then, slowly, we added (photography of) children, families and high school seniors to the mix as well. It took us between five and 10 years to become independent, where we could open the studio full-time.” 

As their passion became their main source of income, Mary said “there was always continuous learning,” with the two staying at the cutting edge of photography trends and technology via their association memberships and various seminars they attended. 

She said she and Steve would eventually lead their own seminars, as part of earning their two relevant degrees: master of photography and photographic craftsman. 

Fascinated by the medium’s possibilities, Mary said the two aspired to learn the finer points of photo composition, lens options, lighting techniques, film development, printing and more – “for ourselves and our clients.” 

Photography editing at the time, however, was outsourced to photo labs who employed full-time artists – who Mary said “were just phenomenal and did such a beautiful job” – responsible for retouching film negatives “with a very fine sable pen, paint brush and inks.” 

“It was a very intricate art, and there were specialized people who did just that,” she said. “You can imagine a negative – that is probably two inches by two and a half – so that had to be (done) under a microscope.” 

When customers paid to have perceived imperfections edited, Mary said some of the edits required artists to paint directly and imperceptibly onto a printed positive. 

However, these talents and several others related to photography would soon be obsolete, she said, as the industry was headed for digital disruption. 

The bigger picture 

Gueller’s Photography, like all photographers, had always been film-based – though Mary said that all changed between 1998 and 2000. 

“Because we belong to these organizations, we knew (digitization) was coming, so we started early on with education processes to learn it,” she said. “Everyone in the industry actually thought it would take longer than it did, and all of a sudden it caught some people by surprise, and it was all here already.”  

Mary said she and Steve were well prepared and positioned for the digital revolution. 

“We’ve always been trying to keep a step ahead and abreast of all the new technology, so we implemented it a little bit at a time,” she said. “Within a year or two, we were fully digital.” 

Though they always sought to stay current, as a lover of the medium, Mary said she still laments the loss of photography’s bygone meticulosity. 

“The film and the artistry that goes with the film era – that will never be replaced,” she said. “It was gorgeous imaging… more of a science and an art then. You had to know exactly how to use your camera and your camera settings with every image you took. You weren’t able to look at it to see if it looked okay and take another one. Everything had to be perfect.” 

Mary also said the early digital cameras produced poorer-quality images, but with Gueller’s gradually employing the improving technology, the studio upheld its consistency, with customers unaware of the switch. 

The fundamentals of photography, she said, largely carried over into the digital era. 

Still, Mary said the new technology brought with it new, in-house responsibilities of photo editing and printing. 

Fortunately, she said, Ryan became interested in the industry while in high school, after which he joined the Gueller’s team full-time. 

“He’s always been a very good artist, so it was natural for him to go into digital artistry first,” Mary said. “After he did (image editing, etc.) for four to five years, then he started integrating into the camera room.” 

Diligence from the film era, she said, continues to serve digital photography – whereas the cost of film made for considerate shots in the past, now such consideration leads to saving time during the review and editing phases. 

“When we were film-based, you had to know all of your settings and you had to be confident that what you were doing was going to produce a good photograph, because you wouldn’t see it until the film was developed – and you can’t go back and redo a wedding,” Mary said. “That was a very good discipline for us, because… each shutter-click cost you money, so you made sure it was good before you clicked it. Now, people can just take hundreds of pictures and go in and fix what they didn’t see, and I feel like we’re so well trained to see things that we fix it before (we shoot).”

Though she experienced the exciting advent of digital image editing, Mary said she also recognized the need for restraint – not only to save costly time, but for the sake of aesthetics. 

“You can do too much to (a photo),” she said. “You have to know the right balance.”

Digitization was also accompanied by accelerating upgrades to photography equipment and its related software, and she said Gueller’s must work to stay at the forefront of these developments, even if it means purchasing upgrades increasingly frequently. 

Mary said the technology also changed the very nature of the photography business. 

“When we were film-based, in our area there were probably five main studios,” she said. “Now, there are probably 200, because there are so many people who work part-time and out of their home, (who) get a good digital camera and now they are photographers. So, the training for a lot of photographers is not there, but there’s a lot of availability. They can buy a good camera and start working.” 

With Ryan also having earned a master’s degree in photography, Mary said Gueller’s will always focus on fundamentals and employ classic methodology. 

“We still photograph that way – we don’t rely on fixing things afterward, unless we absolutely have to,” she said. “We know how to get the photographs correct before we take them.” 

Flash forward  

Though Mary said Gueller’s Photography has built a strong reputation through its first 45 years, with so much competition – and as camera phones have become virtually ubiquitous – the studio must continue to make a case for itself, if not for the very concept of professional photography. 

“We always have to keep our quality up and find new ways to bring people in,” she said. “Our business has changed so much over the years… Every business has evolution and change, and photography is the same.” 

To achieve quality photography, Mary said the pursuit is as technical (correct lighting, exposure, etc.) as it is hospitable (getting subjects comfortable, posed well and self-assured). 

Regarding the latter, she said conversation is key.  

“You get an insight into reading people – if they’re shy, if they’re outgoing, what their personality is,” she said. “That helps in the session to bring out who they are.” 

The conversations, Mary said, are also highly rewarding. 

“It’s fun to get to know the people, and a lot of times they come back, or you see them around town or you recognize them,” she said. “You really make friends.” 

Another benefit of digital photography, Mary said, is the ease of showing subjects an instant

preview of their photos, which she said typically brings about more comfort than self-consciousness. 

“Most of the time, it makes them feel more confident, because they’re always nervous,” she said. “Once they see (themselves) through the camera view, they think, ‘Oh, that’s what that looks like. Yeah, I look pretty good here.’” 

Mary said it’s always enjoyable to witness attitudes improve over a shoot. 

“Especially guys – they’re the ones (who’ll say), ‘I don’t need my picture taken, I don’t want to be here’ – and the majority of them leave saying, ‘Wow, that was really fun,’” she said. 

In addition to the interpersonal rewards, per guellersphoto.com, the studio’s work has resulted in numerous industry awards, including: 

• Mary being named Photographer of the Year and First Runner-up Photographer of the Year from the Wisconsin Professional Photographers Association 
• Steve and Mary being the only couple in the Wisconsin Professional Photographers Association to each receive a perfect score of 100 on prints they have entered in competitions 
• Ryan being awarded Best Wedding Album and Best of Show – Wedding from the Wisconsin Professional Photographers Association, as well as Court of Honor for prints entered in competition 
• Ryan receiving top senior portrait awards from the (High School Senior and Youth Sports National Photography Conference
• Gueller’s Photography being named one of the Top Ten Wisconsin Photographers for “many years” 

Even among such accolades, Mary said it’s the repeat customers who recommend Gueller’s who mean the most. 

“We feel like their family, and we appreciate them so much,” she said. “It’s been wonderful to get to know their families and watch them grow throughout the years.” 

Mary said she anticipates new challenges facing photographers, though these are almost always accompanied by opportunities to improve. 

Artificial intelligence (AI), she said, is the latest such double-edged sword, with its ability to take away customers (with, for example, its ability to manufacture headshots from other uploaded photos) while also aiding Gueller’s ability to process its photos more quickly. 

“Let’s see what the next 45 years bring, but I do think there’ll be a lot of changes coming, probably faster than we think with AI,” she said. “You’ve just got to roll with them and see how to handle it.” 

Still, in an industry increasingly incorporating technology, Mary said when it comes to representing the humanity of subjects, there will never be an alternative to the human elements of photography. 

“Even if you use AI, there’s always tweaking to do, and it doesn’t get it exactly where you want it right away,” she said. “You have to have a human on the controls as well, developing it and tweaking it to where we really want it.” 

After all, Mary said, human beauty lies in the eyes of its human beholders. 

“I feel like every person has their own unique beauty,” Mary said. “Sometimes people come in thinking, ‘I’m not photogenic… There are so many other people who are more beautiful than I am, etc.’ I like to show them that they are beautiful person, and bring out their beauty.”

For more information on Gueller’s Photography, visit the studio’s website or social media accounts.