I feel that I have grown a lot over the past few years and as our family grew along with me, my perspective on photography changed as well. I prayed about it (and worried about it and delayed a half dozen times) and I think it’s finally time for CDP to do some growing and changing too.
It’s been easy to keep things constant, to go with the flow and do what works and what has a history of working well. Don’t ask questions, don’t expect too much, don’t push people outside their comfort zones or go outside the norm. But where’s the fun in that?? Of course I love pretty details and perfectly coordinated outfits and the predictability of staged and styled sessions, but my true passion for photography has always revolved around capturing the moments, the genuine, unplanned, heartfelt stuff that makes photos worth taking and keeping, images that document honest experiences and real relationships. I always want that to be the kind of art that I create for my clients, and every session in which I produce compelling images like those, it makes me happy happy. Having babies of my own made me cherish these types of photos even more and I am admittedly obsessed with capturing them as much as I can, preserving memories of my kids exactly as they are.
So when I think about what I want my work to say when people look at it, what I wanted the whole CDP experience to be, it wasn’t about perfect portraits and posed images in immaculate locations, it was about joy. Pure and authentic joy. No frills, no fuss, no worries, and certainly no stress. Who cares if your outfits perfectly match or if your kid has a scraped knee? Life is messy and childhood is full of life’s most beautiful kind of crazy, no? And kids will only be kids for a short time, so why not preserve little bits of who they are right NOW, where your family is right now in these precious and fleeting moments?
In putting that kind of joy at the center of CDP, it is with sheer excitement and anticipation (and a bit of fear that no one will jump on board — ha!) that I introduce a new type of session for clients who want to take a step away from the cookie cutter photo shoots and let go of the idea of a perfect session, allowing my camera and me into your family’s greatest happy place to capture what fills YOU with joy.
Do you like to have family game night or go exploring? Let’s do it! I’ll bring my camera along. And probably an old quilt 🙂 Or why not document the ordinary every day stuff like digging in the garden, building forts on a rainy afternoon, playing dress-up, or pajama-and-pancake Sunday? That’s the good stuff, am I right? That’s the stuff that gives us undeniable, incomparable joy and that is what I want to shoot for you. These JOYfull sessions will be specific to things that speak to your family’s joy and I will work very closely with you to plan and prep for your JOYfull session. I hope to transition to shooting only these kinds of sessions one day but I know it’s a process to get people to see how beautiful the unplanned, the imperfect, the every day can be. We’ll get there 🙂 Until then, all of my other/regular sessions will be receiving a new level of customized experiences when planning their shoot too, so get ready!
You can read a whole lot more about these sessions in the JOYfull section of my NEW website, finally coming in just a few weeks (no, really)! I am also offering a special promo for families who take a leap and book one of these sessions first. Email me for the full details. JOYfull sessions are only the beginning of the exciting changes on the way for CDP 😉 I hope you are as excited as I am.
