Placerville native opens photo gallery

What started off as a nickname given by a high school photography teacher is now the name of a new addition to Placerville’s business world: Heracain Productions Gallery.

Located at 312 Main Street, Heracain Productions Gallery is owned and operated by Placerville native Sarah Cain. She specializes in wedding, engagement, maternity and special events photography and has a unique eye for capturing memorable moments. However, this special eye has become one that she’s learned not to take for granted.

In December of 2009, Cain went to the DMV to renew her driver’s license and was asked to take an eye test. After having trouble seeing the letters, the workers suggested that Cain go get her eyes checked again by her doctor. The resulting check-up brought some unsettling news — Cain was diagnosed with Keratoconus, a rare eye disease that leads to eventual blindness.

This announcement didn’t exactly have the best timing. Cain had been planning a mission trip to Guam and was looking forward to serving as the Director of Media and Marketing at Pacific Islands University in Guam. However, she had to put this trip on hold and focus on treating her eye condition.

Since Keratoconus is a very rare, genetic disease, there were only four surgeons in the United States that could treat the condition. Luckily, there happened to be a surgeon in San Leandro that could help her, so she went to him and asked what could be done. The answer was to undergo four major eye surgeries.

Cain took on the risk of the surgeries, even though it was very experimental because it hadn’t been completed on many patients prior. However, she didn’t let the operations slow her down — between all of the surgeries, she still did freelance photography work on the side (even if she could really only see out of one eye) and still pursued mission trips.

After the four surgeries, Cain’s vision was restored and she was finally able to go on her trip to Guam. However, while abroad, she realized that this was not the place for her to permanently stay, even though she loved her experience and brief time there. Additionally, staying presented a problem because her special eye doctor was only in California, requiring her to stay in the states for health reasons.

She moved back to El Dorado County and decided to pursue her true passion of photography full time. When she noticed that there was a place for lease on Main Street in Placerville, she took this as a sign and decided to look into starting her own business.

“I thought to myself, ‘God has given me my eyes back, I’m going to do this,’” Cain said when thinking about starting up the gallery.

And with that, she worked out all of the details and was able to open up her gallery a little over a month ago. Cain also recently celebrated her Grand Opening and Open House event.

Cain is a natural lighting photographer and does not use her gallery as a studio. She simply uses it to display her work and to arrange photography sessions for special events, weddings, engagements, family portraits and any other type of desired picture.

She has conquered the battle of almost losing her sight, and now her main goal is to simply capture important moments for people and to preserve their special memories for a lifetime.

“This job is hard, but it’s very rewarding,” Cain said. “I love people and being able to experience their great moments in life. It’s also wonderful learning how to relate to them too.”

To find out more about Heracain Productions, call 530-903-9248 or e-mail hera-cain@hotmail.com.