Becky Luigart - Stayner
Ellie Lee Stayner
All of our visuals tell their own stories,
but there is ONE story we are always chasing: the story of what makes the world and life so beautiful.
At Sunny House Studio, it’s a story we’ll never stop telling.
Like my mother, I grew up wanting to be a storyteller. Also like my mother, I migrated west. I left my home in Alabama to attend the University of California, Santa Cruz. My plan to study environmental studies changed when I started taking film classes and saw how film could capture the emotions and stories I’d been drawn to all along.
I tell my stories with moving pictures, as they used to call them. Shaping the vision, guiding the process, and collaborating with others to bring stories to life, I capture the world around me, from the dramatic to the intimate. I’m also a story-seeker, always looking for telling images and moments. I’ve turned my camera on birdwatchers, biscuit makers, dogs learning to swim and a chainsaw artist. Every project reminds me how extraordinary ordinary life can be.
My portfolio includes short films and music videos, which have been screened at film festivals across the country, as well as extensive commercial and editorial work. I also became one of the few women in the country to be certified as an FAA 107 drone pilot.
At Red Clay Media in Birmingham, I crisscrossed Alabama making short documentaries of the people and stories that make up the state’s rich cultural tapestry: peanut boilers, dog trainers, racial justice activists, sports coaches, cooks and farmers.
I settled in Santa Barbara five years ago, where I discovered surfing, Santa Maria Style Tri-Tip and cold Pacific dips - not exactly the Gulf of Mexico anymore. I also went to work for TV Santa Barbara as a production manager, producer and director. There, I ran a busy, creative studio and won two public access awards. I also met Michael Douglas.
Now, as the western half of Sunny House Studio, my services include short narrative videos and documentaries, both editorial and commercial, as well as video producing and cinematic drone work. Whatever format I’m working in, I am always looking for the stories that express what it’s like to be human, what it’s like to be alive.
I grew up in Kentucky, where my father was a Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter. He told the stories of the coal miners, bus drivers, and waitresses, the people who make the world work.
I wanted to be a storyteller too. I enrolled at the University of Kentucky as a journalism major. Then my older brother loaned me his camera and showed me how to shoot black-and- white photos. I first aimed a camera at my mother’s silver tea serving set. I remember the way the natural light gilded the silver and set the walnut dining table aglow. The beloved family heirloom came to life. It was magic.
I left the University of Kentucky and moved across the country to study photography at Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, California. I would be a different kind of storyteller. Since then, I have focused my camera on chefs, clam diggers, blueberry pickers, and ice skaters. I have shot aboard schooners, knee-deep in a salt marsh, off-the-grid in the Alaskan wilderness, and amid the finery of mansions. In the studio, I have explored my love of food and all the trappings that go with a great meal, from china and linen table cloths to paper napkins and picnic baskets.
Along the way, I married a photographer, had two kids, adopted five dogs, and lived in many places: California, Ohio, Utah, West Virginia, Vermont, and Alabama. We moved to Birmingham when I went to work for Cooking Light Magazine, where I was on staff for 9 years. We stayed put, and I opened Sunny House Studio. For the past four years, I’ve been on staff at Veranda Magazine and Country Living, shooting every kind of food, antique housewares, collectible textiles, eccentric historic homes, and cabins deep in the woods.