Mom's shouldn't always be the ones behind the camera!

We all have cameras at our fingertips today,  and I think it’s safe to say that most of us take advantage of that. Capturing so many everyday moments as we can. But other than the selfies we take with the kids, how many pictures do mom’s have with their children? If you are like me, not many. I’m even sad to say that I didn’t get one picture of myself with my third child, Elle, in the hospital.

I had the idea four years ago to do Mommy and Me portrait sessions. An opportunity for mom’s to get great images with their children. After the first sessions I held, I fell in love with them. It’s such an honor for me to be able to capture mom’s in those sweet moments with their kiddos. To know that both mom and children will forever cherish those images. I wrote a blog after that first year about why you shouldn’t wait.

A little excerpt from that blog:

“So despite the fact that 20 years from now you will all probably be enjoying a good laugh over the hairstyles and awkward phases of life you will also be treasuring these portraits, regardless of how you all looked at the time. Because it was you, then.

I will be blunt, what if something happens to you tomorrow or even a year from now. Your children won't be looking at the portraits thinking "wow, wish mom had lost 20lbs before she got these done". They will be looking at their mom and how they knew her and they'll be so  thankful they have these great images!”

I’ve continued to hold these  sessions every year and last spring just a week before my mom and me sessions were scheduled, the words I wrote in this blog; “I’ll be blunt, what if something happens to you tomorrow or even a year from now” came to a screaming reality. Not exactly how I said it, but in an even more unfathomable way. I watched a dear friend lose her daughter. Just six days before we were to have her mom and me shoot. She is also a photographer so that week we spent at the river, I kept thinking about how glad I was that she has so many pictures of Maddy,  that she had so many memories captured. I was also so thankful that we had done mom and me sessions the two previous years. There were favorite images I have of Laura & Maddy  from each of those sessions. I wish so much that our mom and me session had been a week earlier last year, but I'm glad the two previous years she didn’t make excuses, she didn't "wait" that she made sure she had those images from those shoots and I know she agrees.

As this spring has approached and it was time to set up my Mom and Me sessions, I kept putting it off. I wasn’t sure why because they are some of my favorite sessions. I realized that as the anniversary of losing Maddy approaches, it brings back a lot of emotions. The Mom and Me sessions last year were not easy for me, they brought me lots of joy as always but also the sadness of knowing that life is so short and unpredictable.

I started going through last year’s portraits for this year’s ad and the feelings of sadness quickly disappeared as I looked at the smiling faces, the kisses and hugs I captured kids giving their mom. Knowing these clients have these images and they are ones their children and grandchildren will look at years to come. And hopefully not on some digital device, but in prints that are in frames or in photo albums (but that’s whole other blog)!

That being said, take the time and get professional images taken with you and your children. Whether you come to me or another talented photographer, just do it! I promise you, it’s worth it!

Hannah's Senior Sessions

When I first started out doing photography full time, a fellow photographer told me that I would soon find out that  there was a type of session that I would love the best. I have found that session and it's Seniors! Although I do love all the photography I do, Seniors are my favorite. It is such a milestone for these kids, their senior year of high school really getting to know who they are, gaining more independence and preparing to move away from home and start college. I love getting to know each one of my seniors and following them through their Senior year and even watching them excel in College! I often think of them as "my seniors". Even my girls get excited and will watch what "my seniors" are doing.    

Each year I have a group of Senior Models, this year one of my models was Hannah. We did a fun group shoot at the beginning of summer, with a of a bohemian theme.  This fall we headed out to Hannah's mom's family farm. There were so many beautiful locations there it was hard to choose where to go.  With some amazing smokey sunsets and light due to all the fires this summer, we definitely got some unique and fun shots. Hannah also knew she wanted some downtown Bozeman and snow shots as well.  It was such a blast to shoot downtown, someplace I hadn't shot before. I love getting into something I haven't done before, to push myself and do something different. I will definitely be offering more urban shoots in 2016! We even had a little fun in the studio as well. 

Here are a few of my favorites from Hannah's Shoots! 

Rachael's Senior Session

I had so much fun working with both Rachael and her mom, Susie! Their energy, enthusiasm and ideas made for a really fun and diverse total Senior experience! Susie has become quite the location scout for me now and  I love getting texts from her with ideas :) 

 Rachael is a Senior at Beaverhead County High School. I met with Susie at Wheat Montana a couple days before her shoot so we could discuss ideas and locations. Typically my seniors attend these pre consults as well, but Rachael was already golfing in a Tournament for her HS team!We looked over many pictures from Pinterest that both she and Rachael liked and we looked at several locations around Three Forks and towards Twin Bridges. We settled on Old Town road and Bridge in Three Forks and then we kept in touch over the the next two days because the smoke was THICK during this time. Luckily by Sunday it had lifted enough that we were able to go ahead with her shoot. The smoke made for some crazy, hazy and almost pink light in the evenings. Which I loved and was frustrated with at the same time! 

Susie and Rachael came with several ideas and props as well, we knew were were also going to hold a fall session so we narrowed down what we would use at each one! Since I've shared our first session on social media already, I want to share a collage of some of my favorites from our first session and then talk more about our more recent Fall Session.

This is one image that I really had fun playing with the incredibly hazy and pinkish light! 

Fast forward to October for Rachael's Fall Session, we scheduled it for a Sunday and decided the Friday before to head up to Pony where I had the aspens in mind for the majority of her pictures. Saturday night I barely slept, listening to the 20mph winds and checking the hourly weather way too often on my three weather apps! Susie and I kept in touch all day and I think we decided to reschedule twice, but we both were worried about the colors if we rescheduled so we finally said, lets do it! Since it was still windy when we got to Pony, I showed them the old school and we decided to do some there where we were more protected from the wind, before we moved up to the trees. Rachael has been playing the fiddle since she was a child so we wanted to incorporate that. I love that Susie thought to bring sheets of music as well! 

The wind did die down so we headed up the road to the Aspens! I love taking pictures of Aspens from the trunk looking up so I wanted to try getting that feel with Rachael in the frame as well. She and Susie were also inspired by a photo on Pinterest with 2016 formed with leaves so we do our version of that. About the only thing the wind interfered with was when we tried to get some leaf throwing shots, you can see they all blew off to the left of Rachael pretty quickly, but I loved her smile in this picture anyway!

Rachael's best friend, Kelcy, came along for the session and we had fun getting some best friend shots.  I think every Senior Session should have a best friend and a mom shot which we got as well! 

Learning to love yourself

Last January I had my first boudoir sessions and it was an incredible experience for me. As I wrote in last years blog about them, they were extremely liberating not only for my clients but myself as well. That being said, I didn’t really push those types of sessions over this last year. I was plenty busy with family portraits, senior sessions and sports that I didn’t try to expand my boudoir business. I almost didn’t even put together sessions for Valentine’s Day this year. But I did. And they once again had a huge impact on me.

An idea and a purpose, you might say, started to bud in the back of my head last year. After this last month’s session, it has taken root and I am excited to see exactly where it goes!             

In order to better understand why this has had such an impact on me, I feel like I need to start with my story. I was 15;  I was a gymnast, and I was anorexic. I can’t tell you when it started, or a specific trigger but I can remember going the entire day at school eating nothing but a piece of chewing gum. After school I’d go for a run and then go to gymnastics practice. One day I blacked out in the middle of a back tuck, luckily I wasn't hurt but I knew it was because of what I was doing to my body. I had a weekly ritual trip the local bagel store for a “treat”; a blueberry bagel which I would purchase. For the next hour, I would methodically tear it apart piece by piece and eat it. Then I’d go run. Once again I don’t remember the exact moment or reason but at some point I also started binging and purging. I would weigh myself, binge, weigh myself again, purge and then weigh again to make sure I was at the pre binge weight or under. Each single day began with me weighing myself.  The number on that scale dictated my mood and actions for the day.

For years, my eating disorder controlled my life. Every aspect of my life was determined by whether or not I felt fat.  I could never enjoy myself at any kind of social event because I was too busy judging all the other women in the room and beating myself up for not being skinny enough, pretty enough, or just plain good enough. I was constantly in a battle with my own thoughts about what I had eaten or what I hadn’t eaten, and if I had worked out enough.

I beat myself up constantly for not being what I thought I was supposed to be.

This crippling self doubt and resentment towards my own body kept me from doing so many things I wanted to do.

Today, I am 36 years old, with three daughters of my own. I have been dealing with my eating disorder for 21 years and I will continue to deal with it until the day I die. I am leaps and bounds from where I was even just a year ago, I am finally learning not to be scared of food, I'm more confident than I have ever been. However, this disease is similar to an alcoholic; every single day I make a conscious decision to be healthy. Every.single.day. I struggle.  But I do not want my daughters to go through this and on really bad days, thinking about what they are learning from me, makes me sit down and eat dinner with them.

You may be asking, what does this have to do with boudoir photo sessions? A lot. Everytime I advertise my boudoir sessions, I get the following from several people “I’d love to do a session, but not right now, I need to get in better shape.”

How I respond to those comments is this:

I understand, we all feel that way. We all have parts of our body that we wish were different, we all have things we would like to change. The point of a boudoir session is to accentuate the parts of our body we love, to let go a bit and let us see how someone else sees us. To learn to love the bodies we have right now, and to stop criticizing ourselves. These sessions are not about being in sexy lingerie but about being in something that makes you feel sexy. A tank top and underwear, a flannel shirt with a pretty bra poking through, an oversized shirt showing shoulders; whatever makes you feel good. Most are surprised when by the end of a session they are showing a lot more than they thought they would! My job as the photographer is to know what poses fit the best body types, how to work the light and how to make you feel comfortable and look beautiful!

This year, I decided I needed to be more than talk. I needed to know both sides of the boudoir session. I am 100% guilty of saying “oh when I lose 10 pounds, I’ll do one”. When my friend and fellow photographer Sam Tribble said she wanted hers done, I said “only if you do mine too” So I found myself not only getting ready for a weekend of shoots in January but also getting ready for my own….not an easy thing to do.

I have had three children, I gained A LOT of weight with my first pregnancy, and because of this I have stretch marks, and after 2 more pregnancies I have extra skin around my stomach. I hate it, I hate that I work out so much but still have this skin. I have found myself beating myself up mentally for it. Why? Because I’m not some celebrity who looks perfect 5 weeks after having a baby? Well I'm never going to be where I was before I had children and it's high time I start to accept that! I decided to take to heart what I tell my clients so the week before my shoot I started focusing on what I like about my body. I love my shoulders and my arms. They are strong. I love my legs from running. I communicated all of this with Sam, just as I talk to my clients about these things leading up to the shoot. We talked about poses, outfits and ideas.

I’m not all that comfortable in front of the camera with clothes on, but I have to say that by the end of my shoot, I felt more comfortable half naked in front of the camera than I ever have (with clothes on)! Sam showed  me a screenshot and I felt the tears flood to my eyes (I couldn’t believe how I looked and was so happy that I had finally done this shoot. When I viewed the edited images, I didn’t see the things I hated about myself, I saw the things I loved. I saw myself through different eyes.

Again, the boudoir sessions have sparked something in me.  We, especially women, have so many pressures we are faced with on a daily basis.  With Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest we are given these false ideas that we have to be perfect and over the top to be a successful wife, mother and woman. That’s not the case and it shouldn’t be the case.

I have this incredible feeling that I can use my photography in a way in which to help women. To help them feel beautiful, sexy and confident. We need to learn to love our bodies at every stage of our lives: when we are young, when we are at our fittest, when we are at our heaviest, when we are carrying a baby, after we have given birth, as we grow older. We must learn to love ourselves and I want to help us do that by photographing women - real women!

I am working on the beginning stages of an idea for a personal project which includes photographing women in a way in which we are embracing and celebrating both the good and the bad. I want to change our perception of beauty and perfection. I want my girls to look up to real women, not photoshopped magazine women! If you are interested in being a part of this project, please contact me!

I know this has been a long post, I hope you stuck around to read it all :)! Last but not least, I wanted to share a few of my images that Sam took. This is really out of my comfort zone, but I’m asking others to be real, so I need to put myself out there as real as well!

I haven't shared all my favorites (gotta keep some for the hubby :))

The Cooper Family

I'm pretty sure the middle of August until now has been one gigantic blur! Welcome to a family and senior portrait photographers busy season! I always know it's coming but yet somehow forget how crazy it can be! I took this weekend off of shoots to hang out with the family and try to do minimal editing. I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for catching up on editing, so I feel a little better about doing so...
I haven't had time to keep up on my social media the way I should. But I just had to take a few minutes and blog about this session.
You may or may not know that I also work for the Lewis and Clark Journal, a monthly publication that Christina Kamps and I put together every month.  Last month, I sat down with Katie Cooper to talk about her blog, Pitchforks and Pomegranates. I won't go into too much detail here as you can read the full article here: www.lewisandclarkjournal.com. But Katie grew up just South of Willow Creek on her family's Hereford Ranch. Today Katie works on her ranch as well as pursues her love of fresh, healthy and real food and also incorporates fashion and her fantastic sense of style.
 She asked if I would do her family's portraits: her mom and dad, herself and three sisters and their families! "It should only take about an hour" she said to me. The setting at her family's ranch was perfect so I headed out on a  Friday evening and told my husband, "It's an extended family, it'll probably be awhile".
As each family member emerged from the house, I noted that it was not just Katie with a great sense of style! It was almost exactly one hour later that I was packing up the car and heading home! It's not often that a family session takes less than an hour, let alone an extended.  Everyone was great, kids were well behaved and they made it really easy!

I am very happy with the outcome and I wanted to share. Please check out Katie's blog at
www.pitchforksandpomegranates.com

The Obsession With Running

Running.  I'm often told I'm crazy. Maybe I am. It's hard to put into words what running is to me. 

I've always ran, but not like I do now.  I think it's safe to say that most of my hometown BG friends will remember the 8 min mile with Teri Geer for Volleyball. I remember running around the CA (Central Administration) building a stupid amount of times trying to get under an 8 min mile in order to be able to play volleyball in Jr High and then in High School. I only played Volleyball a couple years. Let's just be honest, I really wasn't very good at it...or basketball. I was a gymnast and even though I wasn't phenomenal at that, I still loved it. Running was always a part of my conditioning and my workout plan.  I didn't run far and I doubt I ran real fast, but I ran.  It wasn't until after I had my second daughter and she was about a year old that I decided to run my first race, a 5k and that was it,  I was hooked!   Since then running has become so much more than just a way to stay in shape. 

Running is my "me" time, it's my stress relief, it's a way to challenge myself.  I started running road races and pushing my mileage. I will never forget my first seven mile run with someone I looked up to as both a runner and a photographer, Amy Berg. We got done with  that early morning run and she said "you just ran seven miles"! 

In the last five years that I've run competitively (and by competitively I mean against myself...ok maybe I'm a little competitive with others!), things have changed.  For the first few years I ran road races and road races only. I hated trails, my time slowed down way down and I struggled more. 

But then a year and a half ago,  Tara asked me to run with her. I was always hesitant to run with others because 1, I didn't want to slow them down and 2, I didn't want them to slow me down. Plus it's my "me" time.  I had always tried to keep up with Tara at races and always failed miserably, so I was scared.  Today I am so thankful that for our friendship and our runs and I don't know what I'd do without them! Tara has pushed my running and made me challenge myself even more. Thanks to Tara I now LOVE trail runs. Conquering switchbacks and mountains is just as fulfilling as hitting a PR on asphalt!  Long Sunday runs are so much better with a friend as well! Tara definitely has pushed my running to a new place and I think she's become my therapist as well ;) 

I didn't really set out to write this blog about me and my running journey, but my running journey  is what made this shoot so special and fun for me. Had I done this shoot 8 years ago, it wouldn't have had the same meaning. Running is so beautiful to me, it allows me to explore places and roads and country that I normally wouldn't. It allows me to start my day feeling fulfilled. It allows me miles of time with just me and my own thoughts with no one interrupting them! It allows me to become a better person. The feeling of exhausting myself and pushing my body past where my brain says to stop. Running in the cold, the rain, the snow, the heat reminds me that I can get through any obstacle that comes to me in my life. Running is my drug. 

I was so honored to be asked to do a shoot for Bozeman Running Company this summer. My worlds collided and I love that feeling!  Bozeman Running Company is a great store downtown Bozeman. My feet are always so happy when I leave there :)! They put on fantastic races and every time I go in  the staff is so happy and helpful. I was nervous for this shoot for a couple reasons...1 it was something different and 2 I wanted to capture running and what it means to me and so many others! I wasn't sure if I'd be able to do that.  I think that I managed to do just that. From the solitude of running in a beautiful place to the fun and camaraderie that runners have together, I feel as though I was able to capture it all.  Here's just a few shots, enjoy! 

Big hair, vintage dress, fake birds and flower headpieces

I've mentioned before that I want to take a little dive in to the conceptual world of photography, as well as modeling and fashion. It's outside my box but a way in which I can use more of my artsy/creative side. I want to throw out a lot of the rules for posing and perfect lighting and correct skin tones. Isn't that what art is about, breaking rules and creating something that is beautiful to you? If it is beautiful to others, than that is just a bonus.

I've met many people over the last few months who I've wanted to use for one of my concepts (because of course I have several running around in my head!). Unfortunately, between my regular schedule of clients and having three children these shoots just kept getting pushed aside. One evening a friend texted me and mentioned that her daughter was interested in modeling and I said "Oh I have all these ideas in my head, I'd love to use her for one! Set a date with me and then I have to execute it!" So we did just that.

For well over two years I've had a concept in my head that I've wanted to do.  This is what was in my head: A black dress, big hair, a birdcage and railroad tracks.  At first I wanted someone with long dark hair and and a dark and dreary day for this shoot. Hailey has short blonde hair, but I decided to go with it. I couldn't really control what the weather would do that day.  A few days before our shoot I  was inspired by one of my favorite photographers, Sue Bryce to create some headpieces. So off to Michaels I went and my girls and I sat at the kitchen table with a hot glue gun and created!

The day of the shoot came and it was a sunny, blue sky day. I was a little bummed but I thought "I can always overlay a dark sky in post". I also decided to abandon the railroad part. Railroads are used, a lot. I had recently taken a run on a road that I loved and thought...that's it!

Here a few of my favorite shots! And after writing this and posting I think I might just play with some dark cloud overlays in a few, just to see! For my portraits I want to be as natural as possible, just fix a few things here and there and done. So it's a little hard telling myself that in my concept photos, it's ok to use to photoshop as a tool and "paintbrush"!

This was actually the second part of our shoot. The first part I wanted to do a softer, flowery, hippie feel. You won't ever hear me say no to a hippie feel for a shoot :) I was on a bike ride one evening and took a dirt road I'd never been on and stumbled upon a small groove of trees that were amazing! So we went there first! Here's a few from that portion! 

I had such a blast with this shoot and I really cannot wait to do more. It's something I need to take the time to do. It's good for the soul.