This project grew in my belly while listening to a talk on creativity and the need to go after your own personal projects no matter what else you’ve got rollin.
 
It was an experiment and a disaster by some standards–the one black and white roll had ONE image that turned out.
 
but it’s probably my favorite image i’ve ever made.
 
there’s something about answering that call to create, when the creating is for no one but you, that paves the way for you to make the biggest, best, boldest most beautiful work you’ve ever made. (and also some of the most terrible, because it’s all an experiment!
 
Be SELFISH in your creations
Be GENEROUS in your sharing.
“You can always tell people who live for others by the anguished expressions on the faces of the others.” -Liz Gilbert. So perfect, right? ha.
 
The work we feel and admire most wasn’t made for us; it was made for the person who made it.
The work that was left unrecognized and unappreciated in the artist’s lifetime—made for the artist who made it.
I made this for me. For all the feelings I feel as a mother. But in the specific lies the universal, and it’s always my hope that my creations reverberate somewhere in your heart, your experience, so we can all come together under the same sky and say, mmmhmm. me too.
 
Here’s part one.

If these images move something in you and you want to have a family session that MEANS something more than just a representation of your faces I’d love to be your lady. Contact me right here and I’ll send you all the pricing and availability deets.

we are the same and we are completely different.
everything changes, but nothing changes.
self portraits–what a crazy, interesting game to play. it requires me to get over myself, ironically. i write our story in these photographs but mostly i write mine–it’s the only one i know.

.

for the nerdy crowd: the crazy color frames are double exposures with an iridescent pencil case–the colorful ones of me, my 5 year old Vienna took (so either i’m a really good model or she’s a child prodigy…i like both those options so i’ll let you decide wink) some freelensing, mix of 35mm portra 400 on the nikon f100 with the sigma art 35mm 1.4 lens and portra 400 on the pentax 645nii 75mm lens, plus a coupla digital shots thrown in.

i photographed their wedding when we lived in california and gushed about how beautifully they loved each other. it sounds cliche to tell you all the things they are together, so i hope these show you instead.

and hi if you’re still reading and you have a family I wanna tell you that you need photos of you together. you need to see yourselves inside the hard, hard work you do inside four walls every day. and if you’re here i think you want not just a representation of what your faces looked like, but also how it feels to be you, right now. when everything is so fast paced and images die after twenty four hours on the internet, i just want to give you something that will last, and speak to right now. because really, that’s all we have, huh? tomorrow never comes. welp. didn’t mean to get sky-high here at the end but maybe you needed to see that truth, whether to remind you to book that photo session you’ve been meaning to get around to, or just to go home and love your people a little more intentionally.

Every single one human being is creative. To be alive is to be creative. There’s no dividing line between us, artists vs. non-artists, makers vs. non-makers. There’s no one who has created nothing. That smile you coaxed out of a sulky baby–creation. That meal you made, the elegance you embodied, the outfit you wore, the apology you truly meant–creativity at its most fundamental.

It’s a runaway train you can chase and think is elusive, or you can hop on and RIDE. Riding is easy and fun and doesn’t take a lot of effort, just noticing what’s outside and in and responding with intention.
And then, the crackle of something deeper than you sizzles and there it is–your creation, a thing that wasn’t there before there was you.

Miesh is a creative genius i’ve admired for years so to collaborate with her on her family shoot was a dream come true. We wanted to explore the idea of a mother who is strong and powerful, yet soft, and the strength and grace that lies in holding those two opposites at the same time.

helloo. you. yep, talkin to YOU m’love. if you’d like a family session of your very own with your favorite people on earth i’d love to be your lady. Send me a message and we’ll chat pricing and availability lickety split! can’t wait to hear from you, truly.

Everything I have written in my mind sounds wrong because in these times, there’s nothing right to say.
This sweet baby boy passed away unexpectedly.
He was six weeks old.
I can’t pretend to know what it’s like to bear that loss, even a little bit. But I know we are all asked to do absolutely impossible things in our lives. Without a choice, really. And that it is our opportunity to walk through those impossible things with each other, in whatever small ways we can.
We almost didn’t take these photos, almost didn’t do the session. And I think it was divinely orchestrated, meant to be that we did. Let me be clear: this isn’t about photos–it’s not some exploitive call to book a photo session. It’s about a whole life, a family, grief, love. Of course our memories of those are more than just an image but what we actually have, tangibly, to remember about those things matters so much, and so much more than we think when we believe we have more and more time.
This doesn’t feel right, but the only thing I know is that showing up even when we say the wrong thing is better than being silent for fear of offense. Nikki said she wanted to share Samson with people, that she was glad to have images of him shared. I think that is the most beautiful, generous thing. He’s a light, and a reminder of everything we all need to remember.

I want to say more, I long to say more. Because it isn’t my story to tell, and yet it is. Because of the photos but also because all of our human stories resonate deeper than pure experience–we don’t have to experience something personally to feel what it would be. And yet, everyone experiences it differently so we can’t pretend to know what someone else is going through. Walking together through the darkness and the light is what I keep coming back to.
Those who have wanted to reach out to this family–Nikki and Joel, baby Samson’s parents, have chosen to give to a cause that matters to them and you can read all about it and donate here in Samson’s honor, if you feel so inclined.

Well hi. You’ve got tenderness, you’ve got ache. I see you. You’ve got grief and wounds and bright patches you haven’t even discovered yet, colors begging to be unfurled for err’body to see and wrap themselves in. Best part is you’re free to walk around inside you and check it all out. None of it is bad. (Telling me this too!) As I walk around in my own heartache and big breaky stuff as of late I want to push it away and move onto the joy–my insides get frantic and dizzy wondering when we’re gonna be out of this. When we’re going to be back on the joy train. But joy is made from knowing the bottoms of sorrow–we have to know what sad is to have any reference for happy. I preach what I need to learn, and wow this keeps coming back to take my face in its hands and say, there’s no shortcut. you need the pool of all the pain and all the beauty alongside.

It’s all part of you, part of me, a puzzle piece that makes up the whole–and part of the collective Us that needs dark to know light. #loveiseasyloveishard

And hey if you’re still reading you just might be interested in a family session of your own that shows your giggly huge joy as well as your soulful serenity and so if you want images of your best people with depth and heart I’d love to be your lady. Now booking Utah family sessions and California sessions (dates TBD!) both in home and outdoor, so whatever place you wanna create in I’d love to make some treasures with you. Contact me for session details right here.
P.S. If you’re a fellow family photographer have you checked out the Love Soaked Family Photography Retreat? It’s a workshop for family photographers who want to make heart led images that light ’em up, happenin in Salt Lake City in April and just a few seats remain so go check all the deets, reserve your seat, or shoot me an email with all your questions.

at my Love Soaked workshop, we did a rotating shoot to give everyone a chance to apply what we’d been talking about and this meant everyone–including me–had TEN MINUTES to direct our model families. woof.

so what do you do in ten minutes? what do you want to say with your photographs if you don’t have the luxury of time? take that stale process of yours and shake it up, baby. blend it in the blender and see what you create on the other side. one of my favorite books ever is Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. She shares tons of prompts and exercises and one of my favorites is to list verbs related to an activity on one side, and nouns related to a different activity on the other side. then you slice ’em all up and get yummy pairings like ‘sizzle ski’ and ‘fry snow’ from a verb side cooking and noun side skiing. it forces you to think in a new way, even if you mostly get nonsense, you get something NEW. we need to do the same with photography. at the beginning we need formulas and frameworks and rules, and then, we need to mush and smash them all into something uniquely our own.