I have been obsessed with photography my entire life. It all started with a photo my father had taken of the Capitol building in Washington D.C. before I was born. He had the photo hanging on the wall of our hallway in a collage frame, and, for some reason, that photo fascinated me. It moved me and I wanted to learn how to make pictures like that so I started shooting and learning composition, lighting, posing, and how frustrated my dad gets when I shoot 10 rolls of film in a week.

Fast forward several decades, my husband and I married in 2008. For a wedding gift my father gave us my first professional model digital camera and told me he expected me to do something great with it. I thought to myself, "I can't approach people to take their photos so I'll stick with horses and plants." Well, my husband in a nurse and a lot of his patients are WWII veterans. One veteran in particular, Mr. Carr, we were very close to. Mr. Carr spent his life after the war as a professional cowboy photographer. He had been all over the country and other countries for photographic assignments for big publications and he loved to look at my photos. That made my heart swell with pride, although he liked my photos and encouraged my with constructive critiques, he kept telling me "horses don't make money, but people do." He wanted me to stop taking pictures of things that didn't matter and find people to shoot. He wanted me to learn how to express their individuality and emotions. I was very hesitant at first because I am pretty shy, but from my first wedding I shot in 2009, I've been hooked. I go anywhere and everywhere there are people and tears of sadness or joy will be shed. I love it!

Since 2009 I've been shooting weddings left and right. They are a lot of fun and I love bonding with the converging families. I love directing people who are shy and reserved in front of the camera. However, as my business grows, my interests are expanding and I am adding boudoir and creative shoots to my repertoire.

This year I plan on incorporating boudoirs into my wedding packages and I would also like to start working with models on my conceptual shoots. I have a lot of ideas and I've been using some of my friends as models, but working with friends is a lot harder than working with models that know what they should be doing. So, my reason for having a Model Mayhem profile is so I can connect with models and aspiring models so that we can work together and knock out some fun projects!

Although I like the looks of "natural light" photography, I almost always use one or several lights. I like natural, un-staged settings for commissioned portraits and weddings, but, for my creative shoots, anything goes! I have several creative projects rolling around in my head, one has to do with a character from literature and the others are fairly dark and emotional. I edit everything using Photoshop CC and Lightroom 5 and my favourite portrait shots lately have been silhouettes with a colourful sky in in the background. I am a very happy person, but with some unhappy things in my past (such is life) and so a lot of that sad emotion likes to come out in my creative work. I like to show the light from the darkness.

I really look forward to meeting and working with some of the models and mua's here! Let me know if you have a creative project or an assignment I can help you out with or if you're interested in my projects, too. Most of my projects are exclusively for women but one is exclusively for a man with a very specific look and then another includes a man in full body makeup/costume.

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