Let YOU shine. Part I

I spent the past week in Las Vegas.

If that sounds thrilling to you, you should know, I am not Vegas material. I don't gamble. I'm not much of a drinker. I wasn't even there to see Britney. Okay, so I own some of her CDs. Okay, a lot of them. Okay, yes, I may have watched a lot of her music videos and tried to replicate her dance moves. But a lot of the allure wore off somewhere around the time she started shaving her head and appearing on the cover of every celebrity news magazine for her smashing umbrellas into minivans. Ohhhh, Britney. We'll always have high school.

I was in Las Vegas for WPPI, the world's largest wedding and portrait photographer convention. I heard tell there were about 100,000 of us there. Maybe that was a Vegas embellishment though. There's no way to know what's real and what's fake in a place where women who wear sequin bras and bird plumage on their heads is normal weekday attire. 

It was an intense week with sessions about shooting and lighting and editing and marketing and branding and search engine optimization jammed in with product demonstrations and gallery trials and print competitions and enough information to make a photographer entrepreneur's head spin. (More on that in another post.)

Yesterday afternoon, as my time in Vegas came to a close, I began to yearn for my family. I could feel the tender pull of the familiar grip me harder and harder as my flight was delayed at the first airport, and then the next, and then I couldn't find my suitcase on the baggage carousel for 30 minutes, and then I got pulled over by a cop on my drive from the airport home. (Got off with a warning though!) It was the Murphey's Law of homecomings.

I finally arrived at my dark home 2 a.m., and made a beeline for my kids’ bedroom. I leaned down over my son’s bed, kissed him on the forehead and breathed in his skin. 

He reached up to wrap his arms around my neck. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured, still asleep.

By all conventional measures, I wasn’t beautiful. I looked — and probably smelled — like I’d been on an airplane recycling the air and dead skin cells of strangers for four hours. My eye makeup was crusty. My hair a frizzy mess. I was wearing basically glorified pajamas, comfortable and unstylish. My chosen travel attire. 

But he wasn’t talking about my fashion. He was talking about the beautiful connection we shared. He was talking about the warmth of our arms around each other. 

I moved to my daughter’s bed, wrapped my arms around her, felt her start to rouse. her  hair smelled like strawberries. She must have had a bath recently. Or maybe it was her fruity smelling detangler. Either way, good job, husband!

“Mom? You’re home?” Her words blurred together. Still, she was articulate for a half-asleep two-year-old. “I love you. You’re so beautiful.”

There, in the dark, my eyes brimmed.

What if we could measure our warmth instead of our jean size? What would our beauty look like then? What if our connection to the world around us could be calibrated instead of our body fat percentage? Would we worry about our scars or freckles or the space between our eyes or the width of our nose or our wrinkles or our hair cut if instead we focused on the kindness and compassion in our spirit?

I wish we could see ourselves the way our kids see us. In the dark, with their eyes closed, they feel our beauty shining through our earthly bodies and our clothes.

We should too. 

Many thanks to the talented Jen Fredette of Mountain Pearl Photography for capturing this image of me shining with Cora when she was a baby. It's one of my most cherished possessions.

On Motherhood {Bitterroot, MT Maternity Photographer}

When I had my son two years ago, I contemplated hiring a newborn photographer. After three and a half hours of unsuccessful pushing, a C-section, very little sleep and breastfeeding issues, I was completely and utterly out-of-my mind exhausted. But I still wanted photos. I wanted photos so badly of his tiny, wrinkly fingers and toes. His poor misshapen head. His button nose. I knew he wouldn't look like that for long. I knew he'd wouldn't be tiny. (Man, was I right. He's 40 pounds now!). I wanted photos. So I googled from my hospital bed and ended up finding a photographer I loved. 

Photo Credit: Renee Petersen of Saloli Moments Photography

Oddly, family members with the best of intentions discouraged me from hiring a photographer. I was pretty good wielding a camera, and I should just take my own newborn photos and save the money, they said. The only problem with that scenario -- I wanted to be IN the pictures. I wanted to be interacting with my son and husband. I knew if that's what I wanted, it's what I deserved, so I didn't think about how many diapers I could buy with the money I spent on photography. It was an investment I was happy to make.

Two years later, I STILL love Renee's photographs of our time as a new family of three.

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to photograph several moms with their amazing kiddos. It was a day of mini-sessions I designed to capture the delight and radiance of every stage of motherhood. 

From the easy laughter when we experience when they tell us a joke only we will understand.

To the tenderness as we hold them close to us, breathing in their sweet baby smell.

To the innate protectiveness we feel for them that cannot be contained, especially when they're doing something terrifying.

To our reaction when they return our affection.

To the excitement we feel when we get to watch them experience something new.

I am so lucky that I get to capture these moments and help women preserve them forever. I am so blessed that this is a "job." I am so grateful to everyone who has trusted me with their cherished families. 

Blessings to you on this Mother's Day and every day hereafter.