i’m rarely drawn to photos because of the composition or the lighting. my favorite images are candid and tell a story. i want to look back at them and remember the moment in an almost-touchable way—and the moments around the moment. because of this, i’m sensitive to whatever mood is afloat whenever i have a camera in hand. i like photos that, even if not the most artful, instantly make me feel happy. 

the day before we took these, we experienced a pretty epic mother/teenage daughter argument. i was feeling super sentimental around her sixteenth birthday, and had been asking, for weeks, for some photo-taking time with her. it just wasn’t working out. the days ahead (according to the forecast) were looking cloudy, but the morning sun, this day, was perfect, and i wanted to head out for a hike—the two of us, a tripod, and the camera. she wanted to sleep. we were both frustrated and annoyed. so i decided that we would just forget about these together pics. i didn’t want to look back at them and remember this tense energy. a bit of time passed, however, and i started to feel differently about it all.

our life, together, is full of love and a whole lot of laughter…but there are plenty of moments when we’re not understanding each other, when things don’t seem fun or funny at all. even though we were already laughing again by the time these photos were taken, this is exactly what i want to remember when i look at them…

our beautiful, sometimes messy, full-of-it-all life.

every bit of it feels like a part that i wouldn’t mind being able to occasionally revisit through an image.