Seattle Newborn Family Photography Session In-Home

I love when I get to witness couples become parents. It’s one of the most mystifying, exciting, terrifying and magnificent life transitions we can experience! I captured their maternity sessions a month or so before getting to meet their sweet baby Henry for this newborn session. This session was shot entirely in my home studio (and living room) and back yard. I love being able to host families here for sessions when I can! Otherwise in-home sessions where you live are always possible and really great. Most people think their house isn’t beautiful, styled, clean or modern enough for a successful shoot. It couldn’t be further from the truth! In-home photos are some of the most personal and relaxed. No complicated parking or trekking around a park, GPS freakouts, nap timing, etc. Home is a great place for your family photo session, especially in Seattle where our weather is so unpredictable!

I loved Emily’s styling for this session. Her breezy Doen dress was so beautiful and soft, and sweet Henry’s little outfits were cozy and simple. The less fuss the better — there are no baskets and props here!

Seattle Maternity + Family Photography Session in the Mountains

This is a family I adore and have worked with several times (always the best!). We met through good old Instagram and I’ve been able to capture their growing family over the last year and a half. We’ve done sessions in-home and out in parks, and today I wanted to share the very first session we did together set just outside of the city in a meadow by a mountain. Something about the magnitude of that place feels so right for expecting a new baby — it’s a big unknown and also thrilling! (Fun fact: I found out that I was pregnant with our second the week that this session occurred!)

Capturing family photo sessions in Seattle is so close to my heart. I love that we chose this city to live in and that we’re growing our family here, and sharing that with my clients is really special. My journey through photography has changed in the years, from focusing on weddings to photographing families as my life shifts in that direction. Enjoy this beautiful mountain maternity + family session!

Seattle Family Photographer | Candid Fall Session

Shooting family sessions is where I started and is such fun. Every family is so unique and I love for my sessions to take a kind of meandering path between a few posed, looking-at-the-camera card-worthy shots and then lots of in between time where personalities come out and serious kid magic happens. One of the biggest fears my clients have is whether their kids will behave and smile nicely and I actually never want that to happen! (Other than for like 5% of the photos.) I love to see their funny ideas. Kids are insanely creative and if you let them take the lead you will go to interesting places.

I loved this fall session at Discovery Park. A word of advice: if you want fall photos, it’s best to take them in September before rainy season hits! Also, if you’re open to an in-home session, they’re absolutely magical.

If you’re looking for fresh family photos in Seattle, contact me here!

Seattle & Portland Family Photographer | In Home is Where the Heart Is

Thanks to the reminders pinging off of my phone every day, I’m more acutely aware than ever how frighteningly fast my son is growing up before my eyes. This week, he’s learned to take after me in yelling at the cat (“Ar-THUR!”) and comes in for snuggles with a vengeance and as gone as soon as he arrived.

I’m also reaching a place of creative growth in which I’m exhausted by the thought of giving anything other than exactly who I am to what I’m creating. It’s a beast, selling the thing you hold so closely to your heart. There are lots of people out there doing this, and doing it well. It doesn’t help that Instagram’s algorithm is increasingly punishing to creatives, and before I go on complaining let me say this. I love creating beautiful images. I love creating beautiful images that carry deep meaning for others. I love creating beautiful images that carry deep meaning for others and being seen for it. I won’t lie and say that last part isn’t important, because it is.

In this current state of creative growth and awareness, I’m honored by the people who choose me to carry their memories on into the permanent state of a photograph. Someone I was talking to recently said that the photos of the memories soon become the memories. The way they’re captured shapes the way they’re remembered. I was stunned at her ability to put into words what I wasn’t able to, and then enamored and in-love-all-over with photography. It’s important in the moments you’re wondering what the heck all of this work is for that you can come back to something like that and get completely punched in the gut with truth and meaning.

All of this to say, I’m feeling so, so, so soft and sweet about capturing families right now. In having my own, I see what a precious and challenging and completely worthy thing it is to bring a child into the world and shape its memories and experiences and really to just create a reality for a tiny vulnerable being. It’s a ton of pressure, and it’s more rewarding than anything I’ve ever done in my life.

Doing this in-home session with the Newells in Portland brought me to that place of gratitude. Doing photo sessions in a park is fine, but gosh, being in the space where you actually create your history is better than anything. It really doesn’t matter if your decorating is good or garbage. It doesn’t matter if it’s a rental or if you own it. It’s part of the story, another family member worth including. I loved every second of this family session and I hope you do too.