Family Lifestyle Session in Bellingham, WA

This session took place about a year ago during a Wildflowers Workshop in Bellingham, WA.  I've been sitting on this one for awhile, but it was mostly because I was wrestling with whether or not to even share it.  It wasn't an authentic family session and if I had the opportunity, I would have done a few things differently.  However, it feels like a bit of a waste to have all these images sitting on my hard drive so I figured that it was time to put them out there and make them count for something.  

This was my very first workshop and I honestly had no idea what to expect.  To tell you the truth, the things that I actually took away from this experience really had nothing to do with photography at all and perhaps that was the point.  Joy created a space for us to share our passions, our struggles, and offered advice for how to value ourselves as artists and change up our businesses.  While we did talk about photography, we also talked about life, love, and gratitude.  I will hopefully never forget that moment when we all sat under the willow tree, wrapped up in old quilts, sharing our hearts and balling our eyes out together.  Maybe it was the hormones (this was shortly after my daughter was born) or maybe it was because I was deeply moved by each of these ladies and their stories.  To this day, we still support each other, offer advice, and encouragement whenever possible.  I am grateful to be able to call these wonderful humans my friends and I will cherish them forever.

As for the family session, well, let's just say that it was rather challenging to capture genuine photos of this sweet family with 13 other ladies attempting to do the same thing.  I took a lot of photos that day, but these are the ones that felt the most genuine and spoke to my heart.