A night out with Conrad in Atlanta, Teen Portrait Photography

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Portraits in the city, a birthday gift

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I’m usually chasing toddlers around their homes with my camera, so it was a welcome change of pace and scenery photographing Conrad in Atlanta.

We met up near the BeltLine as the sun was setting and spent some time chatting away the initial nervousness of meeting someone for the first time. Portrait sessions are always a little uncomfortable at first. There’s a vulnerability in setting yourself up to be seen. I feel uncomfortable at first too. I don’t really love directing people around, and I definitely don’t love the feeling of having an audience of dog walkers and restaurant goers for the photo session.

But the energy always shifts quicker than I think it will. As we follow the gazes and our hunches the camera between us starts to feel more like an invitation for interaction rather than an obstacle, and the audience around us has completely dissipated. I often fall and trip in photo sessions because once I get into the flow, my relationship to the environment changes and I forget about my feet in order to focus on the frame.

As is often the case, we spent longer than I thought we would making portraits. It was play for me, and I hope it felt that way for Conrad too. I’m glad we did because the night gifted us new opportunities to find light.

Conrad’s mom scheduled this portrait session as a birthday gift to him, and I hope the feeling that lingers in these images is the gift that his mom truly sees him and honors the person he is. Which is truly the best gift.

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Here we are

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We don’t have to pretend it’s not hard to celebrate that it’s still good.

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We’re in that sweet spot now. Our kids are sandwiched in that magical time between 5 and 10. Everyone’s old enough to be sleeping in their own bed (well, most of the time) and wiping their own butts (ok, most of the time). They feed themselves and can even prepare food for themselves. They are old enough to be pretty independent and young enough to not be too burdened by the overwhelming emotions of puberty.

And yet, this past year has been one of our hardest years of parenting. Just as we started to relax into the freedom we gained from not having to pack diaper bags or drag along strollers, new issues started demanding our attention that were beyond our parenting knowledge and experience.

I know that there are different phases of family life and that there are different challenges and perks that come with each of them, but I wasn’t expecting this phase to be quite so demanding. Early parenthood left me physically exhausted from all the breastfeeding, rocking, diaper changing, feeding, dressing, playing, and supervising. While the immediate daily caregiving needs lessened in most ways, the way the kids need me now has evolved in more complicated and unexpected ways. This phase has left me with an emotional exhaustion that no amount of self care can manage and no late night google searches can solve. I’ve had to let go of a lot of expectations and ask for plenty of help. I’ve had to find acceptance.

This is where we are at the moment. It feels big and hard to navigate now, but we’re figuring it out. The challenges create opportunities to expand our understanding, practice empathy, and build resilience as a family.

We’re not going to always get it right, but we’re doing the best we can.

And we don't have to pretend it's not hard to celebrate that it's still good. And it’s still so very good.

I’m incredibly grateful for my dear friend Anda Marie for capturing these ordinary fragments and moments of who we were in April of 2022.

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Transforming Perspectives

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LIFE IN 2021

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I’m honored to have the photo below on display as part of the DFP group exhibition Life in 2021. Documentary Family Photographers (DFP) is a global community, directory, and photography resource and education platform committed to empowering and connecting families and photographers from all walks of life.  The organization aims to transform perspectives and to create an impact on lives through documentary photography and community. Life in 2021 showcases images from documentary family photographers from around the world.  The imagery highlighted in the Life in 2021 exhibit is of true stories from 2021 and the universal yet multi-faceted experiences of the year - the good, the bad, the funny, and more. Life in 2021 will be available to viewers online from January 21st – March 6th, 2022. For more information about DFP, or to view the exhibit starting January 21st, please visit www.dfp-gallery.com.

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Masked

This photo was taken during a family gathering in Iowa in the fall of 2021. The kids decorated masks, and then they went about playing with their masks on, completely unaware of how their innocent environment and childhood play had suddenly turned macabre. It’s this play of illusion vs. reality that kept me coming back to these images and how they relate to our lives in 2021, a year where our lives were still disrupted by the pandemic. A year where we were still wearing masks even though we thought we wouldn’t be. A year where people’s perceptions of reality varied greatly, even within my own family.

The Halloween mask, as a symbolic representation of death, is unsettling on a child. Placing a child within this frightening illusion is the sort of thing that scary movies are made of. Masks affect our perceptions of reality. This may be why the idea of wearing a mask has been a very emotional and polarizing part of the American experience of this pandemic. The idea of the mask itself requires an acceptance of a reality that includes sickness and death. Within this context, wearing a mask has become a sort of performative act, much like wearing a Halloween mask, where an illusion of how you want to be perceived based on your reality is projected onto others.

The following photos are part of this series but are not included as part of the exhibition.

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