Who builds this
A working photographer, not a software company.
Keylight is built by Donnie Stevens in Bellaire, Ohio, while he runs two photography businesses that could not be less alike. Every feature in it was needed by one of them first.
That is the whole reason this exists. Photography software is usually built by people who have never had to fix a roster at 6am or explain to a mother why her daughter's retake never got ordered.
Two studios. Opposite problems.
One photographs a school gym in a morning. The other builds a single commissioned piece for one family's wall. Most software is built for one of those and bolts on the other. Keylight had to do both from the first day, because both were paying the bills.
DLS Innovations Photography
Schools, youth sports leagues, dance studios and preschools across Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Picture days, rosters, QR check-in, school portals, retakes and lab orders. None of that exists in Keylight because it tested well. It exists because a gym full of kids does not wait for software.
Visit dls-innovations.com →Blackwater Fine Art Portraits
Commissioned family, children, senior and animal portraits, made as gallery-grade wall art rather than digital files.
Estimates, contracts with e-signing, the client portal, questionnaires and profitability per session. A commission is one family carried the whole way, from the consultation to a framed piece on their wall. That is the opposite problem from a picture day.
Visit blackwaterportraits.com →If a feature has never survived a real picture day, it is not in here yet.
Recognition
Inaugural class, PPA 30 Under 30.
Professional Photographers of America names thirty people under thirty each year for impact on the industry. Donnie was in the first one, in 2026.
- Professional Photographers of America
- Professional Photographers of Ohio
- School Photographers of America
Built by someone who still shoots.
Applications are read personally, by the person on this page.
Apply for the beta →