Inspired by: Long Lost - Lord Huron

Questioning & Challenging your Expectations

I think in life, it’s beautiful how a certain person can bring us to a moment of acceptance and welcoming. Accepting that heartbreak is inevitable and welcoming the love that will eventually hurt us. We realize, that the love we feel is worth every ounce of the potential or inevitable pain. It’s in realizing that we can’t truly experience love without heartbreak, and finding the person that we feel at our core, is worth that experience. Finding the person that fills our hearts up with so much joy and passion, even if only for a small amount of time; for years or for decades or for the rest of our time existing on this earth. We meet people, We connect with them, and we have a moment of saying to ourselves, I love this person and I am welcoming in the potential heartbreak because the love I feel for them makes it worth it. Through allowing ourselves to love, we also grow and learn more about ourselves, which is why I think there are so many different forms and experiences in love. It’s in those different relationships and forms of heartbreak that we gain strength in vulnerability and a new level of emotional understanding.

When we experience heartbreak, we feel a physical pain. A physical ache, and a feeling like a part of us is missing. When we love, we welcome another person into a part of ourselves, so when we lose them, there is a part of us that is missing. It is our job to heal from that, and fill that missing part. Once we do that we grow stronger. We build ourselves from one of the lowest and most painful human experiences to a stronger more resilient individual. It’s not always that easy either, it’s not a straight low to high experience. Its an experience that flows in waves. There are good days, and there are bad days, and the process of healing is honestly a never ending journey. That never ending journey allows us to grow more and more. That never ending journey allows us to experience life fully, the beautiful and the painful.

Understand life as we understand the ocean. There is this flow to it that we experience and understand and then there’s the deeper aspects of it that we have no clue about, but we’re figuring it out.

Understand love, as an important part of life, and heartbreak as the thing that goes hand-in-hand with it. It hurts but it’s also amazing and beautiful and all a part of being a human.

All shot on 35mm and Large Format Cameras with a mix of single, long, and double exposures.

This shoot was inspired by themes of strength, power, and vulnerability. I think those three things work together in order to promote growth in people. It requires strength to be vulnerable and there is power in vulnerability. So for this, I wanted to take photos of someone close to me, who I feel has used these elements in their own continuous journey of self-growth and discovery.

This shoot was meant to capture my model, and roommate, in a space where she feels the most herself. I wanted each of the props/elements in the images to embody the things she is most passionate about. She loves her plants and coffee, and feels the most at peace in the sunroom of our home. One thing that I also wanted to, somewhat indirectly, express was the normalization of woman's bodies. I wanted to utilize the warmer colors and tones to express a feeling of comfort. Women's bodies are extremely over sexualized in the media, this isn't new, but I wanted to capture a woman's body in a way that is comfortable and natural, because that is what a human body is. Not something to be sexualized, but something to be normalized.

My new home, the city of Long Beach, is full of so many free-spirited creative and diverse humans. It is so inspiring and there is so much for me to creatively interact with here. This was shot in downtown Long Beach, which has so many different types of architecture, murals, sculptures , etc., and I absolutely love it all.

A fairy who lost her wings

I titled this shoot “Take me Home” because when my friend and I arrived at, what was supposed to be a beautiful field of sunflowers, and it was actually a field of chopped down brown sunflower stocks, we still wanted to make the most of our trip and take photos inspired by our disappointment.

This was a dream location for me. The Star Wash is a laundromat located in San Francisco. I was so inspired by it when I first saw it and knew I needed to do a photoshoot in it. Trying to do this shoot was challenging with the people around, and the small space I had to work with, but it was so fun to do.

The beauty that can come from “mistakes” made can be so eye opening sometimes. I accidentally had my camera lens set to manual focus for this entire shoot and didn’t realize it. At first I was so upset, I felt like that was such a careless mistake, and it was really discouraging. After working with the photos a little more I was able to create something out of that mistake and ended up loving the blurry out of focus effect my mistake had on some of these images. Embrace your mistakes by working and learning from and with them.

The sky as a backdrop is one of my favorite ways to incorporate the beauty of the earth into my work.

*Styled by Van Clare*

*Makeup by Cheekbone Beauty

*earrings by Bravensaigeegle

This shoot started with a completely different concept than what I ended up doing. At first that was difficult for me, because often times, when I have an idea or image in my mind and it isn’t turning out exactly how I pictured, I get discouraged. This taught me how to be patient with myself, and to just allow the flow of life to inspire me, especially when I am creatively expressing myself. There is no “perfect” or “right” way of expressing yourself.

*Makeup by Veronica Johns*

This shoot was something that was very special to me. The scarf used, was given to me after my great grandma had passed (it was hers). She lived 100 years on this earth and spent her adulthood working for the union and fighting for women’s rights. Her drive and desire to fight for equal treatment for everyone inspired me to use my passion in photography to capture humans for the beautiful creatures we are. I wanted to use this shoot to promote the spreading of positivity and to push people to lift each other up instead of tearing each other down. Like this scarf, we are all unique and beautiful in our own ways, capturing that is something I love to do.