Hightower & Staten Photography

Some businesses become part of a city’s institutional memory simply by sticking around long enough to photograph several generations of the same families, and that appears to be the case with Hightower & Staten Photography on South 6th Street in Fort Pierce. Business listings place the studio’s history at roughly forty eight years, which means it has been operating continuously since the late 1970s, working across both commercial and portrait photography for a huge stretch of the Treasure Coast’s recent history.

That dual focus, commercial work alongside portraits, is a common and practical combination for a small independent photography studio, since it lets the business smooth out demand across the year. Commercial clients, whether that means local businesses needing product or headshot photography, real estate listings, or event coverage, provide steadier year round work, while portrait sessions, the kind families book for milestones like graduations, engagements, and family updates, tend to cluster around specific seasons. A studio built to handle both has more staying power than one that relies on a single type of client, which likely explains part of how Hightower & Staten has managed to stay in business for close to five decades in a field that has changed dramatically since the days of film cameras and darkroom printing.

The South 6th Street location puts the studio a short distance from the main cluster of downtown galleries and restaurants near Second Street and Orange Avenue, in a part of Fort Pierce that mixes residential blocks with small independent businesses rather than sitting directly in the tourist facing downtown core. That is fairly typical for a working photography studio, which does not necessarily need the walk in foot traffic that a retail gallery depends on, and instead relies more on referrals, repeat clients, and word of mouth built up over years of local work.

For anyone in Fort Pierce looking for a portrait photographer with real local roots, or a business needing commercial photography from a studio that has clearly been trusted by this community for decades, Hightower & Staten represents the kind of continuity that is genuinely rare in the photography industry, where studios tend to open and close with the technology cycles. Reaching out directly by phone is the most reliable way to confirm current services, pricing, and availability, since a business with this much history has likely built most of its client base through direct relationships rather than walk in visibility.