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Seattle/Tacoma
Photographer
Filmmaker
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SEATTLE/Tacoma
Photographer
Filmmaker
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I’ve been photographing my sister’s family since I started shooting 6 years ago. What’s been fun, is over time they have seen my grown and progress, and really trust my vision and the freedom I like to give to kids during sessions. They let me take the riegns and trust that something lovely will come out of it. Not to mention, next to my kids, these nieces and nephew of mine are some of my favorite muses.
This session with the Pandiani grandkids and their grandparents was such a treat! I got to document a little bit of everything in both photos and film. It’s not often that all the grandkids get to be together as some live abroad most of the year, so Mary, their grandma wanted one of their favorite traditions they have together captured in photo and video before the summer ended. So when I got their we snagged some portraits and a few photos of them playing, and then I made them a sweet Keepsake Film of their playtime in the pool, which you can view at the bottom of the blog. What is a family tradition that you would love to have bottled up in a Keepsake Film?
Elizabeth is my dear niece, she is the one that made me an auntie. She was born a month before I started my first year of college. It is baffling that she is already here, graduating from high school. It doesn’t seem possible. When she was six I babysat her one summer day. We walked around Point Defiance Park and I took pictures of her with the flowers, and somehow it’s 11 years later and we found ourselves back at Point Defiance Park with the flowers. I can’t wait to see what unfolds with the adventures in front of her.
I loved this family session. Not just because the Roger’s family was delightful (which they totally were), or because the photographs that we created together were amazing (even though they really are). It’s because this session finally pinpointed for me what kind/style of photographer I am. Because for so long I have felt undefined. I didn’t feel like a portrait photographer, a lifestyle photographer, or a documentary photographer, even though I loved all three for different reasons. The sessions I offer when I am at my best and using the eye and perspective that I have been gifted are a mish mash of everything. Not long ago the mish mash would have terrified me. But this is exactly what I want in my family photos, and I know there are other families who want the same thing. They want the portrait, they want what is absolute truth and reality, and they want somethings to have a little order and control. I’m not sure if this makes any sense to you, but if it does, it probably means we were made for each other and I should come right over to your house with my camera. I’ll take off my shoes, I promise.
This session was pure magic. First, it was at their home. If you want to feel nostalgia when you look at your family photos down the road, do them at home. I mean it, your home is the most nostalgic place for you and your kids. We took some time for portraits, we hung out in one spot, but not for too long, because (ya know) toddlers. They played, ate pizza (the dog too). We did a couple more portraits on the porch. We went for a walk down their back alley and around the block, because that is their nightly tradition. And during all of that time, and in the in between times, there was magic happening. I got to capture it. So maybe I’m not a lifestyle, portrait, or documentary photographer, but I AM a “catcher of magic photographer”.
I always attribute different points in my life where I feel like photography was calling out to me, but I wasn’t really listening. A trip to the ocean with college roommates was one of them. I had my little digital camera, when digitals were just on the rise. And I remember playing with light, texture and composition, but not really know why something looked good or how I got it to look good. But I so clearly remember snapping shots of my roommates walking on the beach, the seagulls we chased down, and waves in the sand and the life in the water. I was very drawn to it, and yet at the same time I wasn’t paying attention and never thought much of it.
So when I return to the beach with my family I see all those same images I saw 12 or so years ago and I realize my heart does the same thing it did then. It’s the most simple place you could go, sand, water and sky, and yet the water dances with the shore, the wind ripples in the sand, the sky changes from one moment to the next and when my children go the ocean they come alive, and me and my camera get to help the story of the our time at the ocean.
