Once the kids are sound asleep and peace has been restored in the house, finding quirky little leftovers laying around makes my heart swell with love. A belt used as a highway for a Hot Wheel, empty sippy cups “put away” in the wastebasket, half a muffin in the couch cushions. No matter how insane they drove me during the day, finding these little bits of them gives me a recharge and the strength to make it through another day.

In an effort to remember the little things, I started a 30-day project for the month of June called Kids Were Here. One daily photograph, each a piece of their individual story, about the kids without actually showing the kids. The images will be posted here weekly and on Facebook every day or so.

The little things make up such a big part of storytelling, and while they might not be what someone would typically hang on their wall, it’s a huge part of telling the story of a child, or family, or couple. The detail shots are the pause between a sentence and complete the story. Which is why I’m such a huge fan of albums and books. They are a great way to have all the images from your session and read very much like a storybook. I’m obsessed with them and you should be too.

Book a session to capture your own story.

Saturday mornings as a kid were always the best. The cartoons, the bowls upon bowls of sugary cereal that were banned on school days, staying in your jammies until noon… I got to spend Saturday morning with one of my favorite families and photograph some of those little treasured moments. From the kids first waking up, to special donuts for breakfast. I absolutely love being able to just go in and record some of the little nuances of a family, the dirty bottles and diapers at the top of the stairs, a budding green thumb and all the unbridled happiness that brims from a child.

Thank you for letting me spend a morning with you guys! That bacon maple bar has been on mind mind ever since…

If a photograph is made but not seen, does it exist?

Well it does, of course, but it may as well not.

I have boxes and boxes full of photographs that will never be organized into an album and perhaps never flipped through again, but they are real, they are on paper and can be touched and looked at. They’re tangible and will continue to take up space until my boys have to decide whether or not to keep them or throw them away after I die.

My computer is full of digital photos, external hard drives with nothing but, DVDs and CDs burned to store and archive them. Those may as well not exist. I know they are there but they aren’t as real as my old 4x6s tucked away in a shoe box.

I spent the last few nights culling through last years snapshots and put together a family album that I’m having printed in a photo book. Cheap and quick, it’s a way to let our family archive be real and shared and exist!

I’ll sleep better tonight knowing at least one year of our lives is on paper.

These are some recent photos that I feel like sharing, so they can be real.
enjoy :)

A few weeks ago I noticed Brock was a little cross-eyed. I was concerned but figured I’d wait until his 4 year well-visit in April to ask his doctor about it. It was a week later, when I covered one eye and he told me he couldn’t see anything out of the other, that I made an appointment to get his vision checked, stat. The nurse had him read an eye chart and he would not, could not, see it with his right eye. After struggling to get him to try because he was fighting it so much, the nurse said to me, “I don’t think he can see.” Tears.

He has been diagnosed with amblyopia and strabismus, also known as a lazy eye and cross-eyed. I always thought they were one in the same and that it just meant the eye turned in, nothing more. Amblyopia (lazy eye) is actually where the brain is suppressing the vision from one eye, opting not to use it rather than trying to make sense of the blurry image it receives. This is totally my layman’s description of this, I am not an ophthalmologist nor do I fully understand what is going on just yet, this is just how I’m interpreting what I’ve read and been told. His treatment is glasses and patching.

When I was a kid I wished I wore glasses! I wore my mom’s cat eye glasses she had as a kid even though it hurt my eyes and requested eye exams at the first  sign of any strain. I complained that I was cursed with good vision. During my pregnancy with Brock my eyes went nuts and my dream came true – I finally needed glasses! I dashed down to Lens Crafters and got myself a pair of green Prada specs and wore them like a champion. As soon as he was born I didn’t really need them anymore and now they just sit in a drawer, coming out every now and then when I’ve been staring at the computer screen for too long or I just want to look cool.

For someone who loves glasses so much, I was surprised at my fear and concern over Brock wearing them. My first thought was a visual of the “nerdy” kid from elementary school- he wears glasses, dresses kind of lame and is labeled a nerd from the get go and goes through elementary school and beyond, never shedding that label. I felt like this single item – glasses – was going to alter the course of Brock’s life. Instead of being into sports or rock and roll, he’d be destined for a life of D&D and Lolcats.

The day he got his glasses I was horrified to see one lens as thick as a bottle and magnifying his eye to Office Space proportions. That magnified eye magnified my fears of him being picked on or being seen as a nerd. Brock has always been extremely outgoing and charming, challenging me to step out of my comfort zone because I now have to interact with all these strangers that he talks to, and he talks to them all. And now that he had his glasses, the behavior I used to view as charismatic or social started to look a little goofy and gawky. Geeky, even. This slight shift in my perception of my son really threw me for a loop. Obviously I have some issues with image I need to work out for myself, because he hasn’t changed. He’s the same awesome kid he’s always been, he just has glasses on his face.

I’ve been photographing him through this change and made him my own little project. It’s been great because it has given me an objective look at my son. I can look through these images and see that his personality is the same, he looks darn cute in his specs, and he’s still as wonderful as ever. Even though it’s only been a couple weeks he already looks odd to me when he doesn’t have them on, like a bearded man who shaves for the first time in years.

It seems like this diagnosis explains some of his behaviors that we always chided him for. He would always crash into people, get right in their face to talk with no sense of personal space, and his little brother at 12 months old was way better at throwing a ball than he was. Now it seem that it all stems from his vision, or lack of.

It was pretty funny when the optometrist put his glasses on him for the first time. The first thing he said to her was “Wow, you’re old!” We took it as confirmation that he could see much better with them on.

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It’s hard to believe I’ve photographed this family 5 times already. Seen them expand from a family of 3 to a family of 5. Such beautiful kids, too! Makes my job easy :)This look just kills me – I adore it!This little guy used to be this little guy.And this little lady used to be this teeny little thing!Looking forward to the next portrait session! :)

Now this is what I love – great, fun family, cool house, gorgeous kids…does it get any better than this?!

This photo looks like such a set up, but it was honestly just how they were playing.  Hello, Ikea catalog!

She reminded me of E.T. hiding in the closet of stuffed animals.

You know I loved this green door! (I kinda have a thing for green, if you haven’t noticed)

I absolutely love photographing families in their home and their own surroundings. It’s so intimate and personal – something that will truly be treasured years from now.It’s always an honor. Thank you!

My little baby just turned one this week!With our oldest, I was in such a rush for him to get older and reach every milestone. With Knox it just went by too fast. It’s so surprising to watch him walk across the house, with his little sumo steps because he looks like he’s still 8 months old to me.Every month I’ve been photographing him to capture his first year. Here it is (though I seem to be missing his 9 month portrait. Or I forgot to take it…)Is it just me or does he look like he’s hardly aged?!Happy birthday, Knoxville!

Way back in July I gave away a photo session for my birthday. The winner was Alyssa, who gifted it to her then-pregnant sister Stacie. Stacie and her husband Steve claim to be “the most un-photogenic people ever” which had me a little nervous at first. My first thought was, being totally honest here, that they must be ugly. I scoped them out on Facebook right away and of course they are not, they are gorgeous and have a beautiful family! As I told Stacie, I don’t believe people are un-photogenic, just uncomfortable in front of the camera. The laid-back session we had was intended to capture them as they are and their interactions with each other. There was no posing, no requests to smile for the camera, just an effort to capture them as honestly as possible.Baby Khloe made her debut 2 weeks ago and I was fortunate enough to travel down to Portland to photograph her and her beautiful family.I wanted more of a fly-on-the wall type of session and was lucky enough to capture some, don’t know it you’d call it fun, but let’s say interesting moments, of life with a newborn. This involved lots of spit-up.and a bath.