The best of 2015
A lot of years feel like they fly by, but 2015 wasn’t one of them. It felt long – but in a good way. It was packed full of memories. Like the discomfort of putting on my fifth pair of pants before going outside in Iceland. Screaming at the top of my lungs while white water rafting for my first time on the Rogue River. Losing the feeling in my toes while splashing in the ocean with Mikael on the Olympic Peninsula. Falling down in the snow while photographing a couple at a frozen waterfall. Saying a sad goodbye to the house I grew up in as my parents move forward with building their dream home. Drinking too much wine with friends during a rainy weekend at a cabin in Washington. Stuffing my face with Indian food with my sisters on Christmas Eve. Crying tears of joy when one of my best friends surprised me by coming home for my birthday party. Reminiscing of my childhood while driving along the Sonoma Coast in California. Experiencing the joy and stress of being both a bridesmaid and wedding photographer at the same time. Playing tour guide for out of state couples during photoshoots on the Oregon Coast. Tasting the sweet buttery amazingness of Lobster Rolls in Boston for the first time. Laughing with seniors as we shot until dusk and the city lights shone bright behind us. Getting drenched on Mt. Rainier in January just for the fun of it. Giggling while being covered in drool from my cousin’s adorable new baby. Dancing the night away with my wedding clients, camera in hand. I photographed 15 weddings, 64 seniors, 27 couples and a handful of other portraits, families, and commercial jobs last year. I spent three weeks in Iceland and several days in Seattle, Boston, and San Francisco. I squeezed three camping trips into a busy summer. I visited my aging grandparents in California four different times. I got closer to finding a work-life balance than I have in years past – still not there yet, but closer. What changed this past year? Several things. I revamped my editing style a few different times, and I feel like I’m closer than ever to lining up the elusive imagery in my head with what I produce on paper. I also started shooting a lot more for myself in 2015 – I still have a long way to go in that regard, but with Instagram as my addiction motivation, I found joy in taking simple pictures of landscapes and the world around me on a day-to-day basis. That said, I was also much worse about blogging, although I sort of made up for that by putting a lot of time into submitting my work to other blogs. It paid off too – my photos were featured on Style Me Pretty, Intimate Weddings, Inspired by This, Borrowed and Blue, and The Knot last year. On a sadder note, 2015 was the last year I spent with my sweet cat Rocky. I got him as a kitten in third grade, so he had been through everything with me – from my awkward middle school days to high school breakups, to college and then finally starting my business and buying a house. Losing him in October during my busiest time of the year was heart wrenching and I still miss him all the time. I took a few photos of him on the last day of his life and they are scattered in this post. It’s crazy to think that this will be the 7th year I’ve been running my photography business. I’ll turn 27. I’ll travel to some new places. I’ll work with some rad new people. Do I have any resolutions? Not really. I just want to be active, present, grateful and openhearted. I want to learn more, listen more, and share more. I want to focus on relationships in an effort to strengthen the bonds I have with the people in my life, as well as get better at photographing the realness that I see in those relationships – be it clients or friends. I want to keep pursuing photography for the sake of fun – I want to stay as deeply in love with the medium as I always have been, pushing myself to create new things and experience the world differently. Here’s a little bit of music to play while you scroll through way too many photos. Clearly, narrowing down images isn’t my strong suit. I’ll work on that in 2016. 🙂
