If you’ve had a special moment in the past 12 or 13 years in Vicksburg – a birthday, high school graduation or maybe a wedding – chances are good that Chris Tillotson has been a part of them.
“We’ve gone full circle with some of them,” Tillotson said. “When I say full circle, I mean we took some sports pictures of them, took their senior portraits, took their engagement pictures, took their wedding pictures and I’ve taken their baby’s pictures.”
Tillotson, a Vicksburg native and owner of Griz Portrait Studio on Wisconsin Avenue, has been capturing milestones like those in Vicksburg families’ lives since 2003 when he opened his business downtown.
“We’ve been doing the school pictures now for almost nine years, and watching these kids grow up and knowing that we took all these pictures you see of them playing sports and all, that’s special,” he said.
Tillotson grew up in a big family and a camera was always around, he said. When he was eight-years-old his brother was getting married when he noticed the wedding photographer and thought it looked fun. He followed the photographer around with his little 110 (a flat, rectangular, pocket-sized camera popular in the ‘70s and ‘80s) snapping pictures alongside the pro, and “it blew up from there,” he said.
His sister and all five brothers used the same photographer for every wedding, so Tillotson studied his every move.

“He shot every wedding, and I would just follow him around and watch him,” he said. “I would take pictures right beside him.”
As he got older, he borrowed his brother’s Canon AE1 35mm camera until he got his own Yashica FX-103 for his fifteenth birthday. His senior year at Warren Central, the yearbook sponsor asked him if he would shoot the Red Carpet bowl, which opened his eyes to other types of photography.
“That was my introduction to sports photography and I said ‘Okay, this is fun,’” Tillotson said.
He went to college at Mississippi State where he studied forestry. Photography fell by the wayside for a while, but he did pick up the future name of his studio.
“I planned to study grizzly bears in Alaska or Colorado after college,” he said. “Everyone was quick to remind me there were no grizzlies in Mississippi, but I picked up the name Griz.”
He worked at a chemical plant until the early 2000s when the plant closed. He and his wife Celeste assessed the situation and decided they should go back to his roots.
“I went to school for forestry, but I know photography,” he said. “We asked ourselves what’s not in Vicksburg? And that’s the old time photo studio.”
They specialized in picture restoration, dress-up, portrait and wedding photography before branching out into sports. While he enjoys all types of photography, his favorite is wildlife and animal photography, especially dogs.
Sometimes shooting portraits of people can be difficult, he said, because people have a tendency to be self-conscious when having their picture taken. To break down that wall between photographer and subject, Tillotson will literally put himself in their position.
“I always make myself look goofy before I make anybody else do anything or pose them, usually that breaks the barriers down,” he said. “Nobody wants to see somebody else, they want to see you just being yourself.”
Though he is the one behind the camera, he credits his success to the team effort of those around him more than to himself.
“When we started the whole thing it wasn’t just me, so I didn’t want to call it Chris Tillotson Photography, I’m all about putting the credit with other people,” he said. “It’s always been a whole team effort, that’s why we decided to call it Griz, because it’s not just me here.”