LeMar Photography

LeMar Photography We specialize in school and sports photography.

06/28/2020

After 36 years, the last days for me of doing business as LeMar Photography have now come to a close. The sign that has hung in this community for the same number of years is now taken down. The 16,000 sq. ft. building that I have occupied for 30 of those years, once active and full of hustle and bustle of studio life, now has a very strange, somewhat eerie, echo to it throughout most of it. The walls are stripped bare of the dozens of portraits and frames that held the images of thousands of people that came to LeMar Photography for thier portrait needs over the span of all those years. The phone has been disconnected and the website no longer exists.
I can’t help but think back over the last 38 years, and reminisce how I got here, to this place and time in my life. It is so very humbling to realize just how big a part all of you have played in the success of my career over those years. So many loyal customers and hard working staff have come and gone over the years, but the working relationships and the feeling of being part of a bigger family with all of you in this and the surrounding communities has always remained, year after year. It is very difficult to adequately put together the words in an attempt to fully describe just how much my time and working relationship with everyone has meant to me, my family and my business over the course of time. You have been the life blood of my business and without you, I would have never enjoyed the level of success I have been blessed to realize. So many memories with so many people. I have been blessed to have enjoyed a level of success in a career that I could never have imagined back when I was just 23 years old and very unsure of myself. Your support and friendships all these years has meant so very much to me and I already miss them very much!
I am very much looking forward to this next chapter in my life, this very unplanned transition into retirement, someday. But I also very much lament what I have to give up and walk away from in order to realize it. At best, it is a very bittersweet crossroads in my life story. But I guess we all have to give up things, people and sometimes our comfort zones in order to grab a hold of and take that next step in our stories and realize new happiness and new relationships in order to continue to grow into the person that God created us to be. The very best version of ourselves.
To simply say “thank you” falls well short of just how grateful and blessed that I really feel for all of you who have accepted and supported me for so long. But, none the less, from the bottom of my heart, I most humbly say THANK YOU and may God bless you always on your path. You have truly been a blessing to me and I will never forget you.

05/19/2020

We will be officially closing our doors at 5:30 pm on Friday, May 29, 2020. We will be reopening our doors to the public from Tuesday, May 26th through Friday, May 29th. We are doing this in an effort to give everyone who have orders here, that they have not picked up , and any other business with LeMar Photography, a final opportunity to pick up those orders and to conclude any business you may have with us. After May 29, our phone will be disconnected. You will be able to contact me via the LeMar Photography or Scott Marthaler pages or by email; [email protected]. For the benefit of all those whom this will affect, I am asking if you, once again, if would please share this post with all of your contacts. I thank you in advance!

05/12/2020

"This Is Getting Real"-Moment #4
As the last days of LeMar Photography continue to wind down, we will be shutting down our website in the next few days. Our LeMar Photography page will continue to be maintained indefinitely. When we do finally close, our page, along with my personal page, will be the sole means of communicating with me for studio purposes. At this point in time, I do not foresee a time when people will not be able to contact me through one of these 2 pages.
The response to giving people access to their previous negative/CD files has been overwhelming. I would have never guessed that there would be this much interest in this. I happy to see it, but I have to continue to ask those who have requested their files to please be patient while Carmen works full time on this project alone. She will definitely contact you just as soon as we have your files ready.
Once again, I'm asking all who read this to share this post with their contacts in an effort to make as many people as possible aware of these changes as they occur and to make sure that as many people as possible get access to their old files before they are gone. Thank you so much!

03/31/2020

UPDATE:
Just like all the rest of us who find ourselves in the same boat with this Covid-19 virus, we too have had to make some significant changes to the plans Carmen and I had made for a timeline to close the studio. Our target for actually closing the studio was, and still is, May 31. However, as soon as it was announced that the schools closed and spring sporting activities have all been canceled, I quickly found myself being unemployed, for all practical purposes. This of course was very unexpected and very untimely, but will not be the end of the world for me. However, this does change the timeline and protocol we were planning on using in executing this shutdown of the studio. First of all, I have decided to temporarily suspend the sale of all studio items that I have been conducting on Facebook Classifieds until it is safe to resume it. Second, both Carmen and myself have decided that it is a good idea for both of us to self quarantine for the next 30 days to keep us both safe. This includes shutting the doors of the studio for the month of April. I am going to make myself available as much as I possibly can to communicate with anyone who needs to contact us. The best way you can do that is to use email. You can email me at [email protected]. I will be checking my email often, every day.
Anyone who has contacted us regarding the locating of your previous sessions to purchase will not change. Carmen has been spending much of her time digging through the vast archives and has been organizing them for all of you who have requested them. When we feel it is safe for her to come back to work, no matter how long it takes, we will resume contacting those of you who have requested these for the nominal donation to the Petermann family of $10. We will also resume taking your requests for these files for the foreseeable future. Third, in order to try to survive this situation financially, I have decided that our website no longer serves any purpose, and I will be shutting it down sometime this week. I will be maintaining the LeMar Photography page indefinitely and continue to communicate with you from there. Thank you for your understanding and patience with us during this very rapidly changing circumstance. I will do everything I can to keep the lines of communication going. If you would please, once again, share this post with your friends and contacts so that as many people are aware of these changes as possible, I would be very grateful. God bless you all and stay safe. Stay home and walk in faith, not fear.

03/23/2020

Up until about a week ago now, it was my plan to have perhaps the largest rummage sale by one person these towns have ever seen, sometime in May. It was going to take all 3 floors of the studio to accomplish this. I think it's safe to assume that's not going to happen any more. That was going to be the lesser of 2 evils on how to get rid of 16,000 sq. ft. of STUFF that I've accumulated over the last 39 years as well as how to raise as much money as I can for the Jacob Petermann family. Well, thanks to Covid-19, I am now implementing the greater of 2 evils to accomplish the dual goal. I spent most of this last weekend photographing every single thing I was going to offer for sale in the rummage sale. Now I will be flooding the Facebook classifieds with all that STUFF! My apologies ahead of time! I am pricing everything to move quickly so it will be first come first serve. Please stay safe until this is over.

“This is getting real”- Moment #3The entire 3rd floor is now stripped to the walls. I haven’t seen these walls bare for...
02/23/2020

“This is getting real”- Moment #3
The entire 3rd floor is now stripped to the walls. I haven’t seen these walls bare for almost 25 years!

There’s jungle fever at LeMar Photography! Starting tomorrow morning, 9:30am, we will be selling all of the artificial ...
02/18/2020

There’s jungle fever at LeMar Photography! Starting tomorrow morning, 9:30am, we will be selling all of the artificial trees and plants that were previously used in sets over the years. These will all be for sale until they are gone, first come first serve. $10 for 3’-4’ plants and $25 for 6’-7’ trees. 100% of the sales will be going to the Jacob Petermann family.

01/25/2020

This post goes out to every person who has ever had a portrait taken by LeMar Photography since 1984. With the closing of LeMar Photography at the end of May this year, I want to put the word out to as many people as I can that I will be making available to everyone, all negatives and digital files that we have been storing for the last 36 years. Negatives can still be scanned and digital files generated from them. I will be charging a nominal fee of $10 per portrait session to retrieve those negative/digital files. 100% of that $10 will be donated to Jacob Petermann's family. All you need to do is to call Carmen at the studio here. You are going to need to know the year the portrait was taken, or as close as you can remember. We will do our best to locate that portrait session file, but after 36 years, we cannot guarantee that we are going to be able to find it. Please call the studio, 701-642-3636, if you have any questions about this. It is going to take a significant amount of Carmen's time in locating these files, so we would really appreciate it if you would please promptly pick up and pay for these files if you ask Carmen to locate them. I would also really appreciate it if you would share this post so that as many people as possible have an opportunity to acquire these memories as possible. Thank you so much!

12/16/2019

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
On behalf of Carmen and myself, LeMar Photography would like to thank each and every one of you for blessing us with one of the best years we have had in a long time! We couldn't be more humbled and grateful for the blessings you've provided for us in this final full year.

I would also like to clear up a misunderstanding that we realize a number of people have with the closing date of the studio. At the end of this "calendar year(Dec. 31, 2019)", we will no longer have any backgrounds for taking "in-studio" portraits with the following exceptions;
Head/Shoulder portraits for business
The Rustic Stairs background
The Window Light Background
The family sized, painted muslin backgrounds

We will NOT be officially closing the studio until May 31, 2020. I hope this clears up any confusion. On behalf of Carmen and myself, we want to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a blessed 2020!

11/11/2019

One of the biggest advantages of owning a 16,000 sq ft commercial building is that you can put lots of "stuff" in it. Consequently, one of the biggest disadvantages of owning a 16,000 sq ft commercial building is having to figure out what in the heck you are going to do with it all, now that I am going to be selling it! This is just one of my many mind-bending decisions I will need to make between now and June.
As a side note, I remember all to well the incredible kindness and outpouring of support, both emotional and financial, that this community showed Toot and I when I made the decision to quite working in order to take care of Toot. Even with excellent insurance, the cost of fighting cancer is devastating, as many of you are painfully aware of. As I contemplate how I am going to get rid of 16,00 sq ft of stuff in this building, it has also dawned on me that this might be the perfect opportunity to pay forward the precious emotional and financial support this community poured out on Toot and I.
I have made the decision to start offering all of this "stuff" for sale, mostly on the Wahp-Breck classifieds on Facebook, between now and the end of May. I have also decided to pay forward 100% of the sales of these items to the Jacob Petermann family here in town, in order to help them try to cover some of the devastating out-of-pocket costs of fighting this good fight. I plan to price these items reasonably in order to avoid haggling and to be able to sell as many things as I can in order to help out the Petermann's. Please watch for these items coming up for sale, assuming I can figure out how to use the site. Once again, I am asking you to please share this post so that I can raise as much money for the Petermann's as I possibly can. Thank you for your help!

10/27/2019

I have an announcement to make to my friends, this community and the surrounding communities that have not only supported me but have also been a part of my life since 1982. This announcement is going to take most of you by surprise. After all, I never would have predicted this happening myself. Equally as important, I am putting this announcement out on social media in order to avoid the confusion and misinformation that inevitably would be generated by the all too familiar, and always inaccurate and incomplete grindings of the rumor mill.

If a person is blessed to reach the age of 60, like I just was this past summer, they either start to form and exit strategy towards retirement or they start to put the one they already have into action. I already had an exit strategy formed, which I was fully intending to implement right about now. Selling the building that the studio is located in has always been the first part of the plan. What I hadn’t planned on, and it was nowhere on the radar, was making any kind of a major career move prior to actually retiring.
So today I find myself informing you of just that, an unplanned major career change. I am NOT retiring and I am NOT changing careers. However, the exit strategy I had planned for my retirement just took an unplanned detour, so to speak.

To make a somewhat long story much shorter, I’ll simply tell you that I am going to be closing LeMar Photography at the end of May, 2020. Let me reassure you that this decision has nothing to do with the studio failing, or even struggling. As a matter of fact, in addition to several other difficult considerations, this decision came especially hard due to the fact that we have been blessed and have enjoyed solid growth over the last several years after enduring the monster earthquake of the “digital revolution” in the photography industry. The career move that I am making involves the “joining of forces” with a very close photographer friend of mine located in Annandale, Mn. As a matter of fact, this person is not only a school and sports photographer like myself, he is also the same person who has printed every single image that I have produced in the last 8 years. His operation is approximately 4-5 times the size of mine and he is in real need of help on the photography side of his business to maintain the quality and stability of his current operation and rate of growth. That’s where I come in.

After many conversations with him, and soul searching for both of us, I slowly but steadily began to realize just how much of a wonderful opportunity this was going to be for both of us. My friend would be on the receiving end of much needed help and stability in the photography facet of his operation, and I would be able to continue to do what I love without the stress of owning both a commercial building and a business and continue to realize the same income level. This will pave the way for me to be able to retire whenever I decide I am ready, and it will be under far less stressful terms than it normally would be. In addition to those two obvious benefits to me, I would also go from living in The Cave (my name for the apartment in the basement of the studio) to living on a lake. I will be living in an apartment that my friend built by converting his oversized 2 stall garage into an apartment. I will also be blessed to enjoy all of the amenities of living at the lake, not the least of which is a pontoon and jet-ski. Living above ground once again is of course an additional bonus. The bottom line for both of us is a clear win-win situation.

Perhaps the most difficult part of this decision was coming to terms with parting ways and moving on with the schools, people and relationships that I have built and enjoyed in this and the surrounding communities for the overwhelming majority of my adult life. This community has been my home since I was 23 years old, back in 1982. I knew that this day would come at some point, but I was not planning on it coming so soon before I actually retired.

I want everyone to know that, until the end of this school year, we will be conducting “business as usual”. There is only one exception to that. On December 31, 2019, we will be discontinuing in-studio photography. What I mean by that, is that I will no longer be doing any photography INSIDE the studio, with the exception of traditional head and shoulder business portraits. All of the photography that I have normally been doing ON LOCATION will continue until May 31, 2020. You will notice, starting Monday, that the building will be on the market for sale. Also, equally as important, this WILL NOT AFFECT the other 2 businesses located in the building with me, Zeke Ink and Heartstone Massage.

If anyone has any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact Carmen or myself at any time.

I would ask one favor of all of you at this point. Would you please share this post? Again, my goal here is to avoid as much misinformation and confusion as I possibly can.

The remainder of my time here in this community will be spent with bittersweet emotions to say the least, but also with the fondest of memories and a deep and never ending appreciation for all we have meant to each other in this working relationship we have been blessed with for so long. Once again, from the bottom of my heart, thank you so very much to all of you that we have been blessed to have served and bonded with for the last 38 years!

Address

Wahpeton, ND
58075

Opening Hours

Monday 9:30am - 5:30pm
Tuesday 9:30am - 5:30pm
Wednesday 9:30am - 5:30pm
Thursday 9:30am - 5:30pm

Telephone

+17016423636

Website

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