Friday, October 11, 2013 at 1:01PM Some of my clients have been with me for several years. I'm on my 11th shoot with one family! I love that about my work. I develop long relationships with these wonderful people, and I'm so honored they have chosen me to be their family photographer :)
Wednesday, July 10, 2013 at 3:46PM Well, it's a baby and mama time of year around little o photography these days...
I can tell you a lot about photographing babies and mamas--maybe because I'm a mama of 4 myself!
Yes, that's my pregnant belly...two months before I gave birth to twin 7lb sons!
I do have a lot of perspective and insight about photographing mamas, mamas-to-be, and babies. I know the best angles for bellies, and the best ways to make little ones giggle! But more than that, when you ask me to photograph your growing family, you can be confident that I know exactly what it's like to:
I'm here because I've been where my clients are, and I wanted to find a way to do it better! I am flexible with my clients because I'm a mama, and I know what it's like. I am here to help you catch the most precious moments in life--and spit up? That's what photoshop is for :)
--xo, b
Tuesday, May 22, 2012 at 6:48PM I really love the last 5 minutes of a photo shoot.
In the last five minutes of a shoot, especially with kids (not toddlers, but the 4-to-14 set), the kids have relaxed faces, they don't flinch at the shutter sound, and they magically seem to blink less! (Not medically possible, but I swear it's true!)
The last five minutes are always full of surprising candid shots for me. I love to see what can happen. We're comfortable, no longer nervous, and usually well on our way to becoming friends. So, there you have it: my very most favorite part of the shoot? Always, always, the last five minutes. :)
Friday, May 18, 2012 at 10:39AM There have been a few seminal moments in my life:
Moving to Denver, Colorado in 2001
Marrying my best friend in 2001, who is now my kind and loving co-parent and best friend (but no longer my husband)
The birth of my daughter
The birth of my son
The death of my mother
That last one has been a real game-changer. As I like to tell my children, everyone has their "unfair"--it's unfair that some children have to grow up in an unsafe place, it's unfair that some people become sick, and others die well before their time, it's unfair that some people lose their jobs, etc. Everyone has their "unfair" because no one's life is perfect.
My "unfair" was the early death of my mother.
It's hard to express what happens when, as a young adult, something happens that shifts every single point of reference you (previously thought) you knew.
Holding my mother's hand while she died quickly, yet somehow so slowly, after an accidental brain trauma due to a seizure...something in me broke, or shifted, or shattered, or pulled. I don't know how to describe it, but there was a fundamental movement in my life that has altered every moment going forward.
I didn't write a big Mother's Day post last week, not because I begrudge the celebration at all, but because it's still a day I would rather spend with my covers over my head and plenty of tissues for all the sobbing that, inevitably, will occur.
I don't quite know how to describe what it feels like to live without my mother without falling into cliches. But I will say that the way she called me in the mornings to make sure I knew the weather forecast--"Hey, darlin', it's going to be chilly today! Wear a scarf!" and the way she smelled like clean clothes dried in the sun with a touch of Youth Dew and the way she listened without already deciding she understood and the way she hugged her grandchildren with her WHOLE BODY, a WHOLE HUG that said how devoted, how in love she was with these little ones...
God help me, I ache as I miss her.
It's hard for a photographer, someone whose everyday work is to CATCH something, to literally and metaphorically CAPTURE a moment and SAVE it--it's hard for me as a photographer to be 100% unable to express in an image what connection I had, and still have, with my mother.
Maybe that's why I am so incredibly interested, even driven, to do that for my clients. "Hang onto this beautiful moment together! SAVE IT!" I'm saying as I take their portraits, take their little moments and keep them safe for a future day when it is missed, when it is needed, when someone is aching because someone else isn't there.
Save it, catch it, capture it, keep it. Not because you want it to leave, but because it inevitably will.
Here's my new family portrait. It's not like the ones I take for you, my clients. It's the only one I can take, because where she is, I can't be. This will have to do for now.
Save it, catch it, capture it, keep it. Because my mother left, but who she was to all of us--that remains.
