hi friends.

I’m sure you’re going to be expecting a resume of some sort and how I had a working knowledge of photography in utero.

I won’t be sharing that, it’s boring and been done a million times. I grew up a weird little kid, graduated high school and college. Probably just like you. I’m married, have a husband and a kid and a dog and live in suburbia. Pretty standard. Let’s do better.

“I’m never shooting weddings”

-Tiffany circa 2001-2008

The first wedding I ever photographed was against my will. A friend told me he wasn’t hiring anyone else so if I didn’t shoot it no one would. So I did. It was a small backyard wedding for a couple who had been together a long time and truly had no expectations of the photos. Now, this is usually where the story goes it was love at first snap. Not mine. I wasn’t convinced. I didn’t hate it, but it still took about 5 more years of small weddings, assisting, second shooting and getting married myself for me to commit to this industry. It was a lot of pressure and I never want to screw it up. It’s a lot of stress, long days, and feeling like you got hit by a freight truck. But, getting to experience intimate moments of lives I never would have known otherwise is beautiful, and an incredible privilege.

sonder

n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

-Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

I was that kid, sitting in the backseat staring out the window and into the other cars wondering about the lives of these strangers. Where are they going? What were their lives like? Had I ever met them before? Weddings are like following those people (in a non stalker way) and when I arrive, I’m invited into those homes and stories for an evening. As an observer and documentarian. Instead of just reading the love story on the pages of a wonderful book I’m immersed into it unfolding on one of the grandest days of it’s existence. But also becoming privy to all these other memories and stories that are shared that led up to that day. Then saving them to be shared for an indefinite amount of time in the future.

All this to say is, this is a glimpse of the specific parts of who I am when it comes to us working together. The stuff like that I drink tea not coffee, or my favorite vacation in the past 10 years? We can chat about that whenever but let’s get to the good stuff first.