One Real Couple
The same two people, followed through the years.
Rachel and Josh. She photographed them engaged, then married, and now she chases their little girl through the tall grass.
The engagement
The wedding
Their family, todayA first shoot becomes an engagement. An engagement becomes a wedding. Then a pregnancy, a first birthday, a family that keeps growing. I get to watch love turn into a whole life, and photograph every chapter of it.
Rachel and Josh. She photographed them engaged, then married, and now she chases their little girl through the tall grass.
The engagementThe weddingTheir family, todaySome of the people I am closest to today, I met because they hired me. It might start with an engagement or a wedding, and somewhere between the sessions and the years after, the line between client and friend just quietly disappears.
“People who started as clients are now some of my closest friends. And it almost always begins with their engagement photos.”
So when they come back, a wedding date, then a pregnancy, then a new baby, and then another, it never feels like a new job. It feels like being let back into a story I have been part of all along.
Having my own daughter, Lily, changed the way I photograph families. I catch the small things I used to walk past, the way a hand reaches out, the look that passes between a parent and a child when they think no one is watching.
“After you have been a mom, hearing a mother say I can’t remember when she was this small feels visceral. You understand that love. And the real gift is having your whole family in a beautiful picture, with you in it too.”
So I photograph the connection between parents and kids on purpose now, the ordinary, tender moments that we mothers so rarely get to stand outside of and actually see.
“Last week I photographed a family I first shot years ago. She pulled out a print I had taken and said, can we do this again? It was printed, up on her wall. I love the way it still feels.”
Not every family photo is everyone lined up and grinning. Some of the ones you will hold onto longest are the quiet ones, a kiss on the beach, a little one lifted into the air, the calm right before everything changes. Those are the frames she looks for.
Give it a few years and this is the photograph that stops you: look how small they were, look how gentle it all felt, right here.
The little ones who grow up in front of her lens, and the joy that never poses on cue.
A family already, big brother and all, before the baby even arrives.
The dogs turn up at the engagement, the pregnancy announcement, the family session. They are never props. They are family, and they get their portrait made right alongside everyone else.
The whole family. Yes, including the one who insisted on being in front.
Paola, Leighton, and their Lily. The reason she believes in every word of this.
The ultimate reward is having these photos in your hands. To hold them, feel them, move them around your walls, and watch your whole story hang there, one chapter at a time.