2025!!!

The tradition continues! I spend the months of January and February looking through every single photo that I’ve taken. I recently finished reading Lily King’s ‘Heart the Lover’ and ‘Writers and Lovers’ and there was a passage in W&L that stood out to me. She’s talking about the process of writing - but I replaced the idea of writing with taking photographs. Try and do the same below.

“He writes, ‘Art does not come from ideas. Art does not come from the mind. Art comes from the place where you dream. Art comes from your unconscious. It comes from the white-hot center of you.’ I’ve been in many writing workshops and never have I heard anyone talk about writing this way. Other art forms, Butler says in this book, lend themselves to this kind of discussion because they are purely sensual - painting, music, dance. Our medium, the written word, is not inherently sensual, or come in through thought … I’m not so comfortable calling it my unconscious because to me it is a conscious process. I am awake. I’m drinking my tea. I’m getting up to pee. But I’m accessing some receptive part of me that on a good day can hear and see and smell and nearly touch my characters and their surroundings.”

The way she described writing is how I feel when I’m at a wedding, or in the middle of a family session. I am somehow able to turn off parts of me that are closed up and I feel completely open and available to take in my surroundings. So much of taking photographs is just witnessing. It’s looking around and removing any judgement or biases. When a camera is in my hand I don’t feel uncomfortable or embarrassed like I might be if I was at a wedding just as me. I feel like I’m able to step into the story and be earnest and make my best judgements when to press the shutter at the right time. It truly is like entering some kind of flow state. In the parts of a day that are not super organized I will often leave wondering ‘what did I even take pictures of?’ It’s not until I look at the images on my computer or the scans come in weeks later that I feel I can really see what the whole story is. And that’s how I treat this yearly ritual. It’s only after it’s done that I feel I can grasp what I spent my time doing, and was it worth it. And it always is.

There are so many talented photographers in this world. And as someone who has been doing it as a career since 2010 it seems there are now more than ever. And what’s beautiful about that is when you are choosing who to witness your wedding, your life, your family - you are more than anything choosing their perspective. I am so grateful that people continue to trust me with my perspective and my choices. So thank you - and please put on some good music and allow yourself to scroll through life as I saw it.