Discovery Park Engagement Session | Seattle Wedding Photographer

Sammy & Alejandro are planning a destination wedding and asked me to capture their engagement session. Sammy had been following on Instagram, and I love the joy of meeting people in real life from that crazy little app!

Discovery Park is one of my favorite spots for engagement photos in Seattle because it’s so beautiful all year round, it’s one of the only spots I know if that has a vast grassy field overlooking water, and it’s a good walk from the parking lot to the area I like to shoot, which means we get plenty of time to get to know each other. I try to never start shooting until I feel like there’s a solid baseline of trust between me and my couple. I want to be able to pick up on their energy, read their cues and really tell their true story, never just run them through a bunch of poses I use with everyone.

After the park, we ran over to the downtown area of Magnolia to switch up the vibe. We grabbed a coffee and wandered. Without a specific plan, we just followed the light and looked for spots that felt right. To me, it’s so much better than pre-scouting a spot and then having the light change, and nothing is the way I thought it would be. This way, it’s a bit of a hunt we go on together, and feels like an adventure. There’s always good light to be found in Seattle.

Updated to include film scans from this day! Shooting film is becoming a passion of mine quickly. It’s a way to offer a totally fresh and different perspective to a digital set of images. I love the texture and the of-the-moment sense.

Seattle In-Home and City Engagement Session

In-home sessions are some of my absolute favorites. Especially when it’s for your engagement photos — you’ll move on and live in different places as you share your lives together, so it’s really special to honor the place where you began your story together. As time goes by they become even more of a treasure. I loved meeting up with Cari & Matt, hanging out in their place and then going for a neighborhood walk. It was a perfect way to spend a Saturday.

This session includes a few film scans taken on a variety of film cameras. One of which I had just purchased from Goodwill for $7 and found that it was mostly broken but made some cool photos!

Seattle Cascade Mountains Engagement Session | Seattle Wedding Photographer

Naomi & Geoff wanted a true PNW adventure for their engagement session. While we had originally planned to do their engagement photos at Mt. Rainier, the weather and conditions made us reconsider. We ended up heading into the North Cascades and it couldn’t have been a more welcome change of plans. Getting out just a little from the city, you remember the greatness of the land around you and the quiet that sweeps across the mountain range. We loved exploring the lush forest and mountain clearing, and had a great time getting to know each other before their wedding in October.

Seattle & Portland Family Photographer | In Home is Where the Heart Is

Thanks to the reminders pinging off of my phone every day, I’m more acutely aware than ever how frighteningly fast my son is growing up before my eyes. This week, he’s learned to take after me in yelling at the cat (“Ar-THUR!”) and comes in for snuggles with a vengeance and as gone as soon as he arrived.

I’m also reaching a place of creative growth in which I’m exhausted by the thought of giving anything other than exactly who I am to what I’m creating. It’s a beast, selling the thing you hold so closely to your heart. There are lots of people out there doing this, and doing it well. It doesn’t help that Instagram’s algorithm is increasingly punishing to creatives, and before I go on complaining let me say this. I love creating beautiful images. I love creating beautiful images that carry deep meaning for others. I love creating beautiful images that carry deep meaning for others and being seen for it. I won’t lie and say that last part isn’t important, because it is.

In this current state of creative growth and awareness, I’m honored by the people who choose me to carry their memories on into the permanent state of a photograph. Someone I was talking to recently said that the photos of the memories soon become the memories. The way they’re captured shapes the way they’re remembered. I was stunned at her ability to put into words what I wasn’t able to, and then enamored and in-love-all-over with photography. It’s important in the moments you’re wondering what the heck all of this work is for that you can come back to something like that and get completely punched in the gut with truth and meaning.

All of this to say, I’m feeling so, so, so soft and sweet about capturing families right now. In having my own, I see what a precious and challenging and completely worthy thing it is to bring a child into the world and shape its memories and experiences and really to just create a reality for a tiny vulnerable being. It’s a ton of pressure, and it’s more rewarding than anything I’ve ever done in my life.

Doing this in-home session with the Newells in Portland brought me to that place of gratitude. Doing photo sessions in a park is fine, but gosh, being in the space where you actually create your history is better than anything. It really doesn’t matter if your decorating is good or garbage. It doesn’t matter if it’s a rental or if you own it. It’s part of the story, another family member worth including. I loved every second of this family session and I hope you do too.