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.

the ways that family life is exactly the same all the time and wildly different moment to moment–

i’ve never met anything that made me swing from one extreme to the other so violently and so beautifully.

navigating that swing from amazing to awful, from boring to brilliant, it’s challenging. like flying on a trapeze with zero warning and definitely no training. parenthood is the kind of thing that no matter how much you “prepare” for it you can never know until you’re swimming inside it day in and day out. maybe lots of other people aren’t as shocked by all of it as i am, but someone out there is, and so i feel this pull to keep talking about it. okay, that was a lie. i feel a pull to keep talking about it because I HAVEN’T FIGURED IT OUT YET. So i wander around in words and tie them up with nice endings that i believe on my good days, and on the days when i’m sobbing on the phone to my mom and she’s saying, i’m so honored that you let me see this, that you don’t try to put on a good face or pretend, and i’m saying, i would, i just have no idea how!–those days, those days i just have a question mark all over everything. i’m learning to sit with the unknowns and the questions and the smacking up against my own inadequacies and trying to give myself grace a bit more. so maybe you aren’t surprised at all that i love spying on all of you and figuring out how YOU’VE figured it out and dancing together around the circus of family and saying, “what is this like for you?” and “here’s what it’s like for me.” if art is giving voice to something unheard that’s what i’d say: here it is, this is what it feels like, sometimes. swinging on a trapeze and trying to do it gracefully while the only people whose opinion you actually care about watch you fall, pick you up, and love you back to life.

p.s. i have 5 family session spots left this fall to get photos in time for holiday cards! let’s chat about your family session, m’dear. (that means i’ll send back all the pricing info super fast + we can talk dates!)

einstein said there are only two ways to live your life. one is as though nothing is a miracle. the other is as though everything is.
i swing deep in both extremes every day, so instead of pounding myself with judgment i want to just gently lead myself to swing into the miracles side more often. the kids have already peed on stuff and are coloring on the walls and i’ve literally slammed the door in my own face? (actually happened–hashtag clumsy) how cool is it that i HAVE a door to slam in my own face. total miracle. magic eraser, miracle. the fact that i get to be the one to have these experiences with my kids, make these memories and show up for them every single day. miracle. the computer i’m typing on, the way my words and photos can reach people a zillion miles away from me and we can connect and feel less alone in the hard things.
i mean! i’ve been doing this experiment for a few days now and it has rocked my world. of course i can’t ALWAYS be in miracle mode, can’t forever be seeing every single thing with miracle eyes right away with no initial reaction. but wow i’m a good at convincing myself, so i might as well convince myself that everything in the universe IS in fact a miracle as often as I can.

kids are always a miracle, whether they’re screaming or laughing or loving or pouting. we had the whole spectrum in this session and gosh i’m always GLAD to see it. it reminds me that we’re all human, and we’re all allowed to be miraculous right alongside our hard parts–maybe that juxtaposition right there is the miracle.

p.s. why yes, i am continuing this lil’ project on the grams with #brookesmiracleeyes if you want to tag along! and if you want me and my maybe-obnoxious miracle finding self to come photograph the miracles in your life i WANNA. let’s chat about your family session, m’friend.

we are here. we are here. documenting our days has such a powerful grounding force to me when i do it right. i need as many practices as possible to bring me back to the beauty that laps up on the shore of RIGHT FREAKING NOW–otherwise i’m miles away planning a beautiful tomorrow.

some people have a glorious ability to stay HERE with no problemo. I’m not one, naturally, in my own motherhood. give me someone else’s family and i am one hundred percent in, it feels like time slows down for me to witness everything and turn it over in my hands and paint it into my camera just the way i see it. so in trying to bring that into my own day to day family life, i’m practicing that same noticing. having the camera at the ready so i can hold that piece of us now and later and eventually, much later after we are long gone someone will see these photos and know that there was love. fierce, awkward, shimmering, hard, all-encompassing love. it sure helps me to see it from the outside right now.

here’s a long pile of beautiful exhausting days smushed together.

hey. still here? me too. would it be too forward to ask ya to take it from here to REAL life? Wink wink. Okay that was dripping in cheese but if you want to have photos of your crew that speak to the guts of who you are, i’d love to be your lady. let’s chat about your family photo session m’dear! whether it’s an in-home session or somewhere in the wild or (my fave!) a little of both, let’s get you in the frame with those peeps you love the very most.

i might make you dance in the rain.

beautiful clothes by hum stitchery.

wanna book a family session that’s a little bit crazy (i mean there are little and big humans involved…it’s bound to get a lil wild) and a lotttt soulful? i’m ready for ya. send me a lil email and i’ll send you all the pricing and availability info. your life matters and i want you to see evidence of that so so bad that i don’t even care that i’m starting to sound desperate and salesy cause the honest truth is i’m desperate not for me but for YOU. for all of us. to see ourselves doing the hard hard work of raising tiny souls and raising ourselves in the process. for all of us to see ourselves doing that work more beautifully than we believe we are, more heartful than we give ourselves credit for, and with more long term ripples than we can ever dream. sermon over. let’s make your family photo sesh happen.

Merrilee is the genius behind Mer Mag–and so of course I feel akin to her on the level of being a creator and artist and mother but the thing that left all of our jaws on the floor (besides the fact that she let 14 photographers take over her house and photograph her family!) was how authentically she lives her art. how much it lives and breathes in every corner, with her projects and her kids’ and all of it flowing in and out of such down to earth NICENESS. you can hear about it, and heaven knows the internet has heard a thing or two about ‘authentic living’ in the recent past–but until you SEE it, in person, you have no idea.

People like Merrilee make me want to become a writer or someone who has a legitimate reason to just follow people around all day and watch how they do what they do–in their art but also in their regular lives.

of course they won’t think it’s extraordinary really at all, but for us on the outside–it’s like watching how they make it rain in the movies, or seeing the curtain pulled back on a gorgeous set without the stage lights on: pure magic and at the same time completely real.

hey there my friend! want to have your family photographed in a way that speaks to the guts of who you are, and not just the smiling faces you sometimes have? yeah. me too. send me a little note and i’ll send you all the family session pricing and availability (still have some fall dates free yo!) and i can show you the beauty you’re creating every single day, minute detail by minute detail, weaving a wonderful web of wild love that NEEDS to be photographed. let’s do this.