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Tim Price of Bryant, Alabama, started Color Craft Studios in 1982 in a spare bedroom. Price's business focused on creating high quality church directories and family portraits in a unique way that also help churches raise money. Price eventually moved his operations into a garage apartment, where he constructed shelves in the bathtub for storage. Within five years, he built a storage building in his father's pasture where horses grazed outside the windows.

Today Color Craft Studios has a large facility built onto the original building. With over one hundred employees, Color Craft includes separate companies that concentrate on processing film, making frames, and printing directories. The company is planning to build a new facility just for the marketing department.

Color Craft Studios offers a pictorial directory or portrait fundraising program, or a combination of both. The portrait fundraising program is the most popular because a cash bonus is offered to help churches raise much-needed funds while providing families with a professional portrait.

To raise money, church volunteers sell $5 or $10 certificates to church members entitling them to a professional family portrait session and a 10 x 13-inch family portrait. The church keeps some or all of the money, depending on the number of families participating, and they can qualify for additional cash bonuses. For example, when 300 families are photographed, the church can earn a profit of $1,500 and a cash bonus of $4,000.

According to Cathy Farmer, marketing director, the concept is successful because there's no obligation on the part of the church. "All they have to do is be willing to work hard," she says. Families that purchase a certificate receive a professional portrait at a great price, and there is no cost to the church. Of course, families are offered the opportunity to purchase additional portrait packages.

Farmer says Color Craft Studios constantly strives to maintain the best in brilliance and stunning color in every portrait. "Portraits are color analyzed so that each one will be the best that it can be," she explains. "The staff artists inspect each portrait for flaws during the printing process and retouch them accordingly. They fix anything from dust and lint, glass glare, to even major retouching jobs like adding and removing items in the portrait."

Although Tim Price died in 2001, Color Craft Studios remains a family-run business, now operated by his children. The Price family sees the church directory as a wonderful ministry tool. It helps visitors as well as new members become familiar with the church family by putting faces together with names and contact information. When a qualifying number of families are photographed, every family participating in the directory receives a 10 x13-inch family portrait and a pictorial directory.

While Price was adamant about delivering portraits of excellent quality, he always focused on ministry. And now his children are focused on honoring his legacy. Price was very active in social causes, and the family has continued to be very active in missions. In 2001 they took medical and dental teams and supplies to the people of El Salvador following several devastating earthquakes.

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