Have you ever looked at a photograph and felt a wave of emotion whether that be happiness, sadness, fear? What about disbelief?
I am a big believer that everything happens for a reason. I am a photographer because when I was eight years old I lost two uncles and a grandfather within eight months of each other and all I was able to see of them was through photographs, a rather small number of photographs that floated throughout the family. I know now that I became a photographer so that no one else in my family would be remembered by only the few photographs passed between family members. This is why when I sat down to speak with a young woman about her own loss and she pulled out a box of pictures of her father, and taken by her father, I was captivated at the life of my uncle that I was seeing unfold before me for the first time.
This young woman, my cousin, was adopted at the age of 4 from Russia, abandoned by her mother by the age of 5, and orphaned by her father at the age of 8. As I spoke with her more, she pulled out one photograph of her father and described the one thing she has ever wanted to do: go to the place where he was, stand in the same place he did, and take the same photo of herself. After hearing this, I knew this is what I was meant to do. I coordinated a trip from Ohio to Mexico so that this young woman could be reunited with her father 15 years after his death. What came from this trip was a sense of peace, between her and her father, and between me and finally knowing what I have been meant to do my entire life.
Why am I sharing this with all of you? Because I want you to know what kind of photographer I am, the passion I have behind my work, and the care I will take working with you and your family.
I want to create photographs of your baby, your family, your senior because I want you to have beautiful photographs that you can cherish for years to come. My goal is to create photographs that when you look back on them ten, twenty, forty, even fifty years later you still feel the joy, the happiness, and all of the memories that went into creating these photos.
I am told that my determination and power to succeed makes me good at what I do, but I also think my creative spirit and my love for what a photograph can do allows me to create and capture timeless memories for anyone who steps in front of my camera.