To my sweet, jolly Julian, on your first birthday — It’s been a whole year, and still I’m amazed daily at how your smile lights up a room. You radiate joy. You seek out opportunities to laugh. Rarely a day goes by without someone commenting about your charisma, your obvious desire to connect to those around you. I watch with amusement as you scan any new room for a pair of eyes you might engage, eager to show your interest and share your deeply dimpled grin. The reactions you elicit from anyone who notices speak wonders, my little love. Your personality is magnetic.
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AMANDA + CAMERON: AN INTIMATE VIRGINIA FARM WEDDING
A blink and it’s flown by. One trip around the sun in practically an instant. That’s what that first year of marriage feels like, and I’m sure Amanda and Cameron would agree wholeheartedly, especially since that first year, for them, saw the birth of their second little boy. Their intimate farm wedding was just 365 days ago, but it could have been yesterday. So much joy has filled their lives since, yet what a beautiful thing for them to be able to look back through their album now, and remember what it felt like to wed their best friend.
A LESS-THAN-GRACEFUL DANCE
You may have noticed that I’ve been a little screen shy lately. The blog has been quiet and my presence on social media has been scarce. It hasn’t been purposeful — there’s so much to I want to share, so many projects I want to undertake. But sometimes, the behind-the-scenes, the technical, the administrative…those things take over. Owning a business isn’t as easy as some out there make it look, and as much as I hate to admit it, I sometimes feel rather resentful of those whose damn-near-perfect online personalities represent only the polished, sexy side of entrepreneurship. Because, guys, there’s a lot of sludge that goes along with this profession, too. There’s tax code to interpret, expenses to track, monitors to properly calibrate, broken gear to fix (and re-fix), streamlining processes to learn, a brand to curate and grow – and the moment you think you’ve got it under control, that you can sit back and let it all run itself – you’re thrown some sort of curveball that sets you back for weeks.
SWEETNESS + NEWNESS + 2016
I was told, once, that there was a certain sweetness to my images. It was at the start of this entrepreneurial journey, when I was still in school, and the words were uttered during a portfolio review by a gifted photographer whose eye is well trained and whose opinion mattered very much to me as a novice in his field. I was surprised by his comment at first, but soon thereafter, pleased; because although I’d never said as much aloud, sweetness is really what I’m after. It’s a quality I didn’t realize, then, was organic to my style as a photographer. With each photograph, I set out to create a beautiful mix of the fleeting and the stylized — a glimpse of your precious story without the clutter of everyday life. My hope is to give you the space to simply be present, while I endeavor to create something for you that is intimate and real and meaningful.
DREAMING OF SLEEP
Truth: I am exhausted. Running entirely on toddler high fives and iced lattes and sheer adrenaline – the high that comes with creative exertion. I used to be one of those people who fell asleep within ninety seconds of my head hitting the pillow. Then, within the course of a dizzyingly short time span, I became a business owner in a creative industry, and the mama of a precious and precocious little boy. And all of a sudden, I find myself lying awake at night – not for lack of fatigue – but because my mind is on overdrive. All. the. time. Goals and to-do lists swirl around in my subconscious as I try desperately to coax my mind into dreamland: how do I grow the wedding side of my business? How do I market myself effectively to my ideal clients? How do I keep up in this field of round-the-clock creatives if I’m only able to work when my son is sleeping (i.e., next-to-never)?
