Photography became important to me long before it became my career.

I lost my dad when I was 22. He went missing, and I spent the next 13 years searching for him. Somewhere in the grief that followed came another realization I wasn't prepared for: I only had ONE photograph with him in my adult life. 
I had memories, of course. But I didn't have something tangible I could hold onto. A photograph of us together. The way we looked at that point in our lives. Something that could take me back, even for a second.

That realization is what made me pick up a camera.
At first, it wasn't about becoming a photographer. I simply wanted to document my own life. I wanted photographs with my children—not just of them. I wanted to preserve the ordinary days alongside the big ones so that someday, long after these seasons have passed, they'll have something tangible that reminds them of what our life together felt like.
And somewhere along the way, that became something I wanted to give other people, too.

Why I do this

And that’s why I care so much about the hug, the glance, your child’s hand reaching for yours, the way your mom looks at you on your wedding day, or the first embrace after months apart.
Because one day photographs become more than photographs.

They become proof that we were here. That we loved these people. That we lived this life together.
 And that’s why I do what I do.

Me, my oldest daughter, and my dad.