My Top-5 Favorite Photos from Summer 2024

I'm kind of ashamed to admit this, but I took painfully few personal images this summer—and I genuinely feel that I missed out on documenting a pivotal season in my children's development as both of them are easing out of child's play and into pre-teen and teen activities.

My goal for fall 2024 is to capture all the beautifully messy details that represent their childhoods. In 30 years, the images showing piles of dirty laundry and scattered toys will be nostalgic, not stressful, right?

While my personal portfolio might be a bit scarce this season, I took on a lot of client work and even participated in a couple of styled shoots. Here are my five favorites from this summer.

Car Wash Couples Session

I adore cinematic images and try to create them whenever the lighting adds to the story. The strong highlights and deep shadows from this part of the session add to the sense of mystery and intrusion into a private moment.

Skateboarding with Friends

Embracing the warm summer vibe, I edited this skateboard shot to look like film. Shot at midday, I love the colors and motion in this image.

Wedding Shots

While I don't shoot weddings, I went to a styled wedding shoot to meet vendors and other photographers, learn new things, and play with fun, artistic techniques. If you’ve seen my work before, you know that I love to pull out a plastic baggie and use it over my lens on occasion. I love how it perfectly framed the couple.

Deep in the Flowers

First, this location smelled divine, and I quickly got distracted, trying to figure out which bloom was wafting my way. But the way the wildflowers framed the subject ended up being so lovely.

Gardening with Girl

We had a fantastic summer collecting echinacea and calendula as I started understanding and implementing herbal medicine into our home. I loved this point-of-view of my daughter's arms as she collected the flowers.