Where it all began
Where did photography begin for me? On a family vacation to Oklahoma with my grandmother and aunt. I’m 9 years old, flipping through my grandma’s photo album a couple of days before we leave to see the rest of the family in Oklahoma, like a storybook. I look at my grams sitting on the couch near me and ask her, “Why do you take so many photos?” Her response? “Because they aren’t just pictures, they’re memories.” In that moment, I knew I wanted to take photos on our vacation to preserve my memories. But I also wanted to create art from the candid moments. I loved looking at photo albums because I loved seeing how unique and special every moment was. Asking questions like ‘what was going on here?”, “Who is this?” “When was this?” and hearing every single story that came with every moment. I knew a photo could be art from looking at National Geographic and being captivated by the sprawling mountain sides, the color cast in foggy forests. I just didn’t know what that would look like for me yet.
So, that summer, my grandma gave me my first disposable camera (how cliche a photographer gets into photography with their first disposable camera, but that is how it goes). With that camera, I spent those two weeks in Oklahoma taking every picture of my family that I thought was interesting, from my cousin cuddling his girlfriend at the time to my aunts and uncles sitting around laughing to just things that I saw on the drive down there (because it's a 20-hour drive). I remember being so disappointed that that little disposable camera only allowed me to take 25 photos. The two weeks ended, we came home, and I got my photos developed. We're going through them, and my grandma said something to me that was so devastating at the time. She said, “You wasted this camera; none of these pictures are good, “ which crushed me.
Flash forward over a decade, and I am living in north Idaho, and at this point in my life, I had been talking about wanting to take photos, specifically boudoir, and then learned so much more about all the other types of photography that were out there. North Idaho is beautiful, and everywhere that we went, I kept seeing photos in my head. Everything that I looked at could have been a beautiful image. So at 26 years old, I finally broke down, and I bought myself my first DSLR camera, and the rest is history. I fell in love with the art form as soon as I took my first photo. I started working with friends and family members, doing couples, families, and even some boudoir photos. I knew I was in love from that first shutter.
I started my business a year later and dove head first into being a full on shutterbug and I wouldn't change it for anything in the world it has taught me to find beauty in everything and everywhere and that has even translated into life when situations aren't ideal there is still beauty there I have come to call it collateral beauty that's what photos are they are beauty in memories.