For the Love of Family Photos

When I'm shooting your engagement, I'm hoping to be there for your kid's college graduation too.

Every time I write here, on “The Pace of Life”, I’m gently reminded how many people are out there that care.

It’s easy to forget that each day and I’m never sure why. I stay busy, often too busy, trying to build community and find myself feeling pretty lonely despite the sea of people I’m around.

Reflecting on that—and remembering that we shouldn’t always trust our own thoughts—makes me consider what things help me feel connected and how I can find ways to do more of that. In general, that means slowing down and leaning into what matters: the people around me who care.

Out of everything, photography has always been my rock. I’ve been behind a camera for a while. We’ll call it around 18 years—that’s as far back as I can find photos I posted on the Internet that I thought were good enough. I was 14 then. I got paid for photos the first time when I was 18: a couple hundred shooting an assignment for The Roanoke Times. Then a couple hundred more for branding photos for a massage therapist, then a doctor’s office.

Some of the old stuff holds up. Others show how much I’ve learned through the years.

All pre-2010. Shot mostly on a Nikon D40. I'd still be proud of that bee photo today, on modern gear.

Is it all leading back to community?

Photos I take today are often for commercial use, supporting businesses and state organizations through my company, Aspire. I love it and a good chunk of my career is spent behind a camera. Back when I started, everyone took the time to tell me it wouldn’t become a career. I listened to those voices for years. And, well, I’m here now. Suckers.

The photos that give me life are with you all.

Having cameras on me and pointing them at people for years now has meant I’ve naturally done some family work over time. Portraits became engagements, became events, became weddings.

As I’ve put more time into it, I’ve developed some amount of style behind it, separate from commercial shooting where I’m working for a brand to bring my customer’s vision to life. Starting all this through journalism, I was taught to never pose shots. Keep it natural. I want my photos to look real, but like you had a really good day at the same time. Just one touch better than the real world, like my brain romantically sees it.

I’m finding that the work that truly sticks, that makes me earnestly happy to do it, is the family work.

The engagements, the weddings, the quiet moments in friend’s kitchens when the light is really good, that I just text over and never post anywhere.

The shoots in your backyard. The puppy portraits and senior dog sessions—those are free, by the way.

It’s crazy to me that I’ve wanted to pursue photography professionally as long as I’ve had a camera and the photos that I’ve loved most are the ones I traded with friends for a 6 pack of beer.

I want to do your engagement photos and then your children's college graduations when our faces have wrinkled with time.

I’m in community building for the long-haul and can’t imagine ever giving up these cameras in my hand, either. I want to make a go of this family work too, at least to some extent.

I’ll never be a family photographer, all-in. It’s a grind and I see that it would burn me out fast. But I want some, and I want to do it for the people who I care deeply about.

I want to go deeper. I want to help those who want to do that too.

See? I said that two weeks ago. This is all coming starting to come full-circle. I don’t want to create for the masses. I want to build for this community that means so much to me already.

I love the response to this so far and I love you all that support me trying to write again. Let’s dive in. Let me know when you want to make some memories and I’ll try to make some magic out of it. A lot of it, I’ll probably still do for a 6-pack.