Writing the stories of your life? Then, you know this writer’s fog well: “Am I saying this right? How do I make these words feel like the way I feel?” Overcome this fog by looking past the end result and simply write your heart. Writing your heart is writing unfiltered, without reserve, and it’s like […]

Ok, I’m glad that title caught your attention. There’s been a bit of a buzz in our documentary family photographer about following the “technical, photography rules” of a documentary photographer that takes on clients… what’s allowed in shooting, what’s allowed in editing, and so on. It pisses me off. The focus is in the wrong place. What you […]

Have you ever felt like you are on a hamster wheel with your photography business? Or maybe like a clone of thousands of other photographers out there, but you aren’t sure what you can do to break away from the mold? Maybe, you haven’t even given yourself permission to break away, because you simply don’t […]

Throughout various communities, I’ve seen photographers wish they could pose men better. Documenting adult men is a whole different ball game and, frankly, is pretty easy to do! I had a wild hair to challenge our FB group to photograph their husbands (or bestie). We’ve been saying for months that we don’t want our blog […]

Light comes in all shapes and sizes and I’m pretty sure at some point you too have been frustrated by the lack of it. Especially when shooting indoors, light can cause tricky situations. There’s just so much to take into account: where’s it coming from, what kind of light is it and the age old […]

Do you rely on your in-camera light meter to toggle 0 (center) and tell you when your settings are going to produce a perfectly exposed photo? I used to. As my comfort level in shooting in manual mode grew, my ability to play with light when it’s uneven, extra bright, or seemingly not enough to make […]

Have you ever been so captivated by a photo, not because of the moment or light, but because of the perspective? It felt like, “HOW did they do that?!” as you reflect on your own photos feeling kind of blah? Let’s breakthrough that feeling with some composition techniques specifically for us storytelling, documentary photographers. I’ve […]

January 2019 We did what we swore we never would: we bought a house that stretched our finances to where we don’t have the money to make this house a home. We don’t like the inside of our home. Most days, it’s fine. We moved here for the nature, not for the house itself. Some […]

I’ve been fortunate to be given access into the lives of photo subjects, such as in my long-form photo project Girls…Now Women, about women I met as teens in foster care. I’ve gotten to know their children over the years. However, I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to document someone delivering a child. The first time […]

“I’m a photographer. How do I NOT have pictures of my dad? I had plenty of posed photos, but nothing that captured HIM as I know him. It was a sick feeling,” said Lora Wallenstein, participant of The Preservation Project. If you’ve ever experienced loss, you’ve feared the strong feeling of your bond weakening over time. […]