hello
friends!

I wish I had some glamorous story about how I got started with this whole photography gig. I wish I could brag that I knew it was my “passion” since I could walk or how my great-grandfather taught me everything he knows and passed his passion along to me or that I was the 3rd generation photographer. I wish I could tell you that I grew up looking thru magazines imagining my name under the images …but that would all be lies.

The honest answer is…. I bought my first professional camera with insurance money after my 17 sister Nicole was killed in a tragic car accident my junior year of college. Y’all-That was HARD. But do you want to know what was harder than hearing she had died? Sorting thru a shoebox of photos to display at her funeral feeling overwhelming regretful that there wasn’t enough. Not enough laughing, not enough personality, not enough of REAL life without cheesy backgrounds and fancy christmas and easter dresses.

After almost a year of the “death money” sitting in the bank, I decided that if I was going to spend the money, it wasn’t going to go to waste. Tears ran down my cheek as I placed that order. Since that camera arrived, I have worked so hard to make spending that “death” money worth it. I taught myself how to use it spending YEARS AND YEARS soaking up all the information I could, making lots of mistakes and pouring my heart into every bit of it. I promised myself that I would use it to document my life, my children’s life and YOUR life, the way I wish hers was documented. I promised myself that I would create something beautiful, because if I did that, then I could keep her memory alive!

I’ve documented amazing moments in people’s lives and because of that, I’ve created friendships from clients that most could only hope for in a lifetime. The camera has taken me to places I never thought I’d travel and it helped me heal in ways you can never imagine. I’ve taken the sourest of lemons and somehow made lemonade -the REALLY REALLY sweet stuff!

My story isn’t glamorous, hipster or trendy like a cup of Starbucks coffee but it is real and it shapes the way I shoot and the filter in which I see the world.