idaho

family vacation means slow mornings of dappled sunlight, good rest for the soul, romping through meadows and beneath the shadows of mountains, jumping into glittering bodies of water, making and consuming homemade ice cream, taking our time to exist in ways that we can't in the movement of normal life. family is complicated, and that's no different when you temporarily change environments. but it does somehow cultivate more kindness, more silliness, more genuine conversation. and it does lead to some photographs i'll cherish for the rest of my life.

thank you, austin dear, for capturing images of my family and i that we would never otherwise have.

recent goodness (may/june tidbits)

how do we deal with the clean up? of relationships pivoting, of moving homes, of seasons extending?

visits, weddings, sunsets. days of packing and unpacking, cleaning and making another mess. buying a boat home with my life human. a whale spotting from alki point. birthdays, including my own. parades, the sweet taste of summer finally bursting through. connection and loss. healthy wonderings and questioning, terrifying doubt. falling asleep to the gentle rocking of my old friend, the sea.

these last few months have been full and chaotic, and i am now settling into this wonderful, new lifestyle of waking up on the water to the cries of seagulls and being able to host my favorite people with veggie kabobs and cold brews. some of these photos hurt to look at, some make my heart glow. and some are somewhere in between, but they are all good. and they're pretty honest, which is all i can sort of hope for in my work. (although, the countless hours spent in these months fixing up and renovating the boat are not seen, they are sort of assumed for me once people start appearing in boat photos)

and last week I looked at my reflection in our thin, horizontal window of the main cabin and I felt myself surface from a wave of uncertainty with relief and gratitude. salt water of my childhood surrounding my new home, memories of submergence a reminder and a grounding, swirling, tumbling return. when you dive beneath a wave for the first time, it feels like you're drowning. but time and time again you surface and gasp and wipe the salt from your eyelashes and the sun casts gold upon the translucent tension that we are thrust beneath, or perhaps we sometimes choose this turbulence. but we return, and there is hope, and what once felt like drowning slowly becomes familiar, you don't grow gills but you do cultivate trust and hope, even if we can still underestimate the size of the wave. 

I don't remember being born, but I remember being loved. and I remember surfacing. I've been reminding myself that everyone is always trying to do their best. here we are, once again, where we always are in our feeble humanness, where we can always come home to, where once we have known love, can simply Be. 

to the people in my life: i love you, i love you, i love you. thank you, thank you, thank you.

technically the rest of these photos were taken in the beginning of july. doesn't matter to anyone else really, but i like keeping track of time.

Zack and Brenna | Seattle Proposal 6/20/17

On their three year anniversary, Zack proposed to Brenna on a chilly Seattle morning, complete with power tools romantically buzzing in the background. We celebrated with a wild salmon brunch and rosé brut in the dining room of his uncle's beautiful Queen Anne home. Thank you, dears, for allowing Austin and me to be part of the start of this exciting new season!

Leanne, Mike, and Mila || West Seattle Family Photo Session

I met Leanne and Mila at a brewery on a lovely late spring evening, playing with a friend's puppy and enjoying the beginning whispers of summer. Little did either of us know that we would connect and I would end up taking Mila's six month photos and documenting their darling family! Thank you, Mike and Leanne, for trusting me to capture your adorable young lady!

6/2/17

There is no shame in knowing and seeing yourself. There is no shame in facing yourself and loving the human the looks back. There is no shame in documenting your existence in the moments that you love yourself, or need to remind yourself that your physicality is powerful, or in vanity and the striving to feel whole. In fact, seeing yourself in brokenness and the reality of your situation can be incredibly grounding. Hard, terribly hard, but important. I would maybe argue that it's essential.

Let us not strive for purity; let us strive for liveliness and fullness and the gasp of air after a season of drowning. Let us celebrate one another instead of degrading each other for our accomplishments and successes. Let us not settle for molds of who we are expected to be. Take up space. Take selfies. Take, and give.

When you document your own existence, you remind others that they can too. There is no embarrassment in rejoicing in yourself. The fact that we have become conditioned to shame each other for using technology as a tool of self expression is proof of our fear of self love and the power of grace, rejuvenation. We have learned to settle. We have let boxes win, once again.

This morning I photographed a number of different adults in a corporate headshot session. The stress and tension that most of my clients exhibited in front of the camera struck me. It's the same fear I witness during family photos at weddings. Generations before ours have learned to fear having their photo taken, whereas we see cameras as a way to bear witness to ourselves. Of course, we are still saturated with images of "perfection" and impossible beauty standards, but I also believe that selfie culture is creating an undercurrent that promotes self love and deconstructs the tension that many people experience with images of themselves.

I think I have come to a place where I believe that selflessness begins with fully loving the self, and in loving the self, being willing and able to give up the self. When we realize our importance and worth, we simultaneously awaken to our insignificance. And we are moved.

Purity is empty. Purity is nonexistent in this life. To be pure is to not be marked by the tides of this life, and none of us can avoid the inevitable push and pull. Why do we teach our kin to strive for purity and not for self love? Why do we teach abstinence before we teach grace and tenderness and consent? What is actually our priority - control, or joy? For the expansion of human consciousness, or the restriction of the heart?

I am learning to love paradox. That I sit in my body and love my thighs that seem to get a little plumper every week as I age and ruffle my hair that is finding its curl again and watch my freckles appear once again in the early summer sun. But that I also exist in a chemical imbalance that causes me to tear the skin on my fingers and pull my eyelashes and eyebrows out when I'm stressed and pick at my toes until they bleed. 

I have visions of sunlight and refractions in salt water and womxn whose hair whips around their faces and eagle feathers brush their arms as they lift their hands towards a light they always knew existed. Womxn whose seal skins allow them to be in the sea and whose human bodies allow them to feel grass between their toes, these womxn who can exist in two places at once, womxn who are not forced to choose but can exist in their complicated, simple, duality. The legends of trees whispering to humanity, telling us to come home. I am learning to open. Trying to bloom, one petal at a time. Allowing dolphins to swim through my neurons and bluejays to make nests at my cuticles.  

Maybe I'm another dumb millennial. But I'm listening, and this is what I am beginning to hear.