RI-Based On Location Photography for Families, Weddings, Events, & Performing Arts
I first knew that I was going to be a photographer in 1999. I was a sophomore in college, and although I had been using a manual SLR camera and developing film since high school, the moment of realization didn’t occur until one random night while dog-sitting at a family friend’s house. Sitting on the floor of the living room playing with the dog, my eyes caught sight of a full moon outside the sliding glass door. Fractured moonbeams split through a passing cloud, illuminating a large patch of condensation trapped between apparently separated sheets of glass in the door. Below the glowing condensation was the lone reflection of a bagged dry-cleaned garment that hung on the wall beneath a recessed ceiling light. All together, the three made an odd juxtaposition of light and layers on the glass door, a symbolic representation of the division between the indoor and outdoor worlds. It was mundane but beautiful. I grabbed my camera and tripod, adrenaline coursing through my veins as I tried to set up my equipment and calculate quickly how long I should expose the film, knowing I only had a few precious minutes before the moon and clouds would change position, ending the trilogy. I literally trembled with excitement as I pressed my cable release to open the camera’s shutter, counting the seconds of exposure time in my head, then repeating the shot four or five more times with longer and shorter exposures to bracket the shot, hoping I was in the ballpark with my guess.
Then it was over. The clouds covered the moon, or maybe the path of the moon took it behind a tree branch; I don’t recall. But I was left with a darkened sliding glass door, an awareness of an adrenaline spike that wreaked havoc with my blood sugar levels, and a roll of film that I had never been so anxious to develop. “I was watching you photograph. You were coming out of yourself,” my then-boyfriend told me later, who was with me at the house. I resonated with his description of what he had witnessed. Something did feel like it had emerged from me that night. For the first time in my 20 years, I knew what I wanted to do with my life.
I graduated from Rhode Island College in 2002 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Studio Art & Photography. In the years during and following college, most of my photographic work was fine art based, centering around an exploration of how humans relate to the natural environment. Images were predominantly landscape in nature, with a hint of human activity. For my whole life, I have held a deep respect and love for all things wild, and the wild that is within us, and several years after graduating from college, I began working for the Apeiron Institute for Sustainable Living, a non-profit organization whose mission was to create a more environmentally sustainable state through education and advocacy. I stayed with the Apeiron Institute for ten years, working as a classroom educator and later as the Director of Marketing & Communications, where I was able to fully integrate my love for the planet with my love for photography and apply it to my career.
And then I had a baby.
After the birth of my daughter in 2011, everything shifted for me. I drastically reduced my hours at work, and suddenly, I had a living, squirming, soulful-eyed subject to photograph! And so began my growing interest in photographing babies, children, and families. I found such beauty in human expressions and the interactions between family members, especially when children and families were playing in an outdoor environment. This is where I am right now in my photographic journey. I would be honored to have you join me!
I use my camera as a witness to the beauty and complexity that exists in both the mundane and the extraordinary moments in life, and I apply this mindset to whatever I am photographing. My photographic style can be described as an organic and uncontrived approach, almost photojournalistic in nature, with an emphasis on natural lighting and real-life interactions. I love photographing children because, especially when younger, they do not photograph through the filters that adults construct between themselves and the camera. There is no overlay of self-consciousness and sometimes not even awareness of the camera. I find hints of the truest human emotions existing in these unadulterated moments.