2015 was a great year, a busy year, but a great year.  Starting with the Curry Family in January 2015 and ending it with the Mullins in mid December I did a total of 32 sessions throughout the year.  Considering I do most sessions on the weekends (with the exception of the summer of course) this was a very exciting and busy year!  This year was mostly family and children portrait sessions but also included three senior portrait sessions, a newborn session and three weddings!  I learned a lot in this year, I learned what I like, what I love, what I want to try more of and what I would prefer to avoid.  I even started to consider what I want to specialize in.

Two years ago around September time, I was sitting in my bedroom in the fan thinking, I just wish I could take pictures of children for families.  I had just finished watching a creative live course on Children’s portraits by the amazing Tamara Lackey and I felt such a strong calling to this specialty.  I wanted to capture lifestyles and emotions and personalities.  Not just poses but true characters.  The problem was I didn’t think I had any connections to families (besides the obvious school connection but to be honest I still don’t feel comfortable utilizing my students as a connection).  And then the Palmer’s came along.  One family two years ago which led to 9 sessions the following fall which led to 32 sessions in 2015.  Thirty two.  I mean I honestly can’t believe it!  The best part about this is that the majority of these sessions have been exactly what I’ve wanted, children and family portrait/lifestyle sessions.  I’ve learned more through this year that I love this specialty and I feel like I’m good at it.  Not to toot my own horn but I’ve really loved the images I’ve gotten this year.

I was given the opportunity this year to try new things such as newborn photography and weddings and it enabled me to really sharpen my focus on what I want to continue to do with photography.  I realized that while I enjoyed the weddings I photographed this past year and truly loved the people, wedding photography just wasn’t for me.  It really hit me when my favorite part of one of the weddings was getting to play outside with the bubble machine focusing on the kids and the family as a whole.  I realized that weddings are gorgeous and full of love but there was a key element that I longed for that would never be visible in wedding photography… the mess.  The messiness of capturing personalities and the variety of facial expressions that may not be beautiful but are in fact completely real.  I would miss that if I didn’t focus on families and children photography.

Beyond the increase of sessions this past year has been full of love and support beyond what I could have imagined.  I wish I could express enough how genuinely grateful I am to my family and friends who have supported me, the families that have entrusted me and to you for sticking with me and coming back again and again to read what feels like, at times, ramblings.  🙂  You’ll never know what it feels like when I check stats and see the numbers on this blog, I’m not a natural blogger or writer but when I see readers becoming more and more consistent it makes this feel real.  As though I’m not just writing to space or myself and for that I have to say thank you a million times over.  Even if you’re not reading but just stopping by to see the images and my work, you’ll never know how much it means to me.  How much it has pushed me forward in this year to keep going, to get a business license, to update my blog interface, to be myself and to share more consistently.  I am really very grateful and hope that this upcoming 2016 year holds just as much love and support as last year did.   If it is anything like 2015 I will be a blessed individual even for just having you in my life.  🙂 <3

So without further ado, here is a recap of my 2015 year with some of my favorite images to date.