I grew up on the Gulf of Mexico in the humid heat of Mobile, Alabama. I still miss the way random people will talk to you about their tomatoes and their children in the grocery store, and the last minute trips to New Orleans to eat beignets and listen to good music. But for a while there, all I wanted to do was see the world. So I moved from Mobile to Ireland to work in a cliffside pub in Rossnowlagh, Donegal, and then on to Montana for college and my first real taste of winter and mountains. From Montana, I moved to Japan to teach English to a never-ending stream of cute kids and retirees in a town on the outskirts of Tokyo, and from Japan I wandered to France where I lived in Quimper, played house, and spent countless hours walking the downtown cobblestone streets and loving life. In 2003, I moved to Chicago for a quick and funny stint as a not so great flight attendant with a handful of free flight vouchers and the grand idea that I could go to every continent on earth and take amazing pictures (but apparently United actually expected me to work). In Chicago I met the fella I love, and we left the city to stay in a jungle village in the upper Amazon basin, and to backpack through Peru. Now we find ourselves happily at home in San Francisco, with the occasional trip to Zambia or Tanzania, and of course, back to Mobile.
I started my photography business about five years ago and I still find myself amazed that I get to do this for a living. I absolutely love my job. I’ve always adored children and gravitate to them wherever I am. They’re just so funny. I love to see their eyes light up when they get excited about something, or go limp and sweet on their mom’s shoulder when they’re tired. The idea that I can have a part in capturing that moment, that expression, that glimpse of a child’s personality that may fade and give way to new and different expressions, thrills me. I think about that child looking at the photo 20 or 50 years from now, or their kids finding the photos in a random shoe box in the attic and seeing their parents in a different way, and it makes me that much more excited when the day is done and I get to sit down and look through photos from a portrait session.
