Former Air Force shooter opens photo studio in Bealeton

By Meg Greenhalgh

By Meg Greenhalgh

Special to the Times-Democrat

Is a picture worth a thousand words? It probably depends on who's taking it.

Named Military Photographer of the Year in 1997, Gary Coppage has traveled the globe capturing images for the U.S. Air Force. He even changed a president’s response to an international disaster through his photographs.

In 1992, President George H.W. Bush doubled the relief effort after he was briefed with Coppage’s images documenting the devastation to Guam from typhoon Omar.

Work with Photographers Press International originally brought Coppage to Fauquier, and he fell in love with the area and saw that providing quality images was a “much needed service.”

GRC Photograph, his new studio in Bealeton, is fully equipped to produce portraits and anything from “passports to commercial catalogs,” Coppage said.

Coppage started the family-owned corporation from his Goldvein home in 1987, but his love of photography started much earlier.

His mother gave him a plastic Kodak camera when he was 12 and growing up in Florida, and he has been refining and practicing his craft ever since. Similarly, his son Jacob, 20, has been helping “since [Dad] could put a camera in my hand.”

Coppage customizes his portraiture work with the objective of “transferring personality into image.”

And while studio work is an important part of the business, he still prefers working in the field ? quite literally. His favorite subjects to shoot are horses and riders, particularly at three-day-event competitions.

In his teens, Coppage was a champion pole bender and barrel racer, and his equestrian background led to one of his first major assignments ? following the U.S. Olympic Equestrian Eventing Team in 1984.

Whether he is shooting the delivery of United Way supplies to children in Mongolia ? an assignment from his days as an Air Force photojournalist ? or a capturing a wedding in Morrisville, Coppage says that the Air Force photojournalist motto ‘Whatever it takes,’ paired with a can-do attitude, gets him the shot he wants.

Coppage will be hosting GRC Photography's grand opening on June 19. The studio is located near Bloom in Bealeton Village Shopping Center.

GRC Photography is open from 10 a.m. to six p.m. Mondays through Fridays. Cobbage can be reached at (888) 472-3686.

More information is available on the Web at www.grcphoto.com.