My passion is to create a moment with my clients

My “job” is not to take a pretty photograph. My job is to create art by capturing you in moments when you are most vulnerable and open. It’s to memorialize parts of this incredibly short life that we are fortunate enough to live. What we create together is not for your partner, social media, or for anyone other than you. YOU - the perfectly imperfect masterpiece. We spend our lives collecting art and moments. It’s up to me to make sure that when you step in front of my camera, I’m giving you both.

how to make a beautiful floral arrangement from plants in your garden

I teamed up with the incredible Brian, from Myrtie Blue, to demonstrate how to make a beautiful floral arrangement from plants in your garden. He makes it look so effortless, and honestly, it is pretty easy! Brian's work is truly art, but his goal was to show that you are more than capable of doing some simpler arrangements, yourself. You can see the full write-up on Style Me Pretty. 

Here is a list of materials you will need:

Favorite Centerpiece Bowl or Compote

Oasis Floral Foam - alternatively you can use a floral frog and chicken wire

Florist Bowl Tape

Floral Knife

Garden Pruners

Dozen Roses of choice from your grocer

Selection of Garden Clippings. We used:

Heucherella Foliage

Blooming Azalea

Bear Claw Fern

"Lady Banks" Rose

Blooming Spirea

Blooming Vinca Vine

Loropetalum Foliage

Blooming Blueberry

Instructions on putting it all together:
 

Buy a dozen roses from your grocer. Choose a color that makes you happy! Keep them in water until you are ready to arrange them.

Then head to the garden in the cool of the morning or evening and forage! Cut from your favorite plants. If you cut in the middle of the day chances are the cuttings will suffer from stress and not survive as long as you might like. Be judicious about where you cut so that your plants remain beautiful and well shaped after cutting.

Choose both blooming and non-blooming plants. The variety is amazing once you really look around your garden. If you don’t have access to a garden, then visit a garden center. There are always plenty of plants to cut and forage from at most garden centers. Plunge the cut ends into cool to tepid water for safe keeping.

 Prepare you container. If using floral foam, float it in water prepared with floral preservative or a little sugary soda water and a tiny bit bleach. Tape the foam into the bowl.

Begin your arrangement. Start by inserting a few stems from the garden that might define the breadth or length of your centerpiece. Make secure and firm insertions into the foam about 12” deep.

Be conscious of how the plants appear in nature or how the stems layer themselves amongst each other. This will help your arrangement to take on that natural garden appeal.

Continue adding your garden cuttings moving back and forth from end to end and side to side; keeping in mind that the core of your arrangement will be a dozen roses and provide real central mass and focus to the finished piece.

Add shorter stems between longer ones to create depth and dimension.

When you have something that looks almost finished, add your roses. Place them mostly in the core of your arrangement, creating focus and mass. You have a dozen at your disposal, so feel free to experiment a little with placement.

Before you know it, you have a gorgeous garden foraged arrangement featuring a dozen roses from the grocer.

what it means when someone invests in me

I just had a dear friend, who is also a photographer, purchase this fine art print from me. She refused to let me give her a discount. She has no idea how much this means to me. When someone else sees your work as art and values what you do. She knows it's not just a piece of paper, but a trip that I took to Italy. It was captured in a composition and moment that I planned, as I pointed my film camera at the cliffs of the Amalfi Coast. It was a feeling that I wanted to freeze and share with others. I hope it brings people to Italy that maybe can't travel there. Or, that it brings those back that have walked the same roads. 

Photography is so much more than my career. It's my blood, sweat, and tears (joyous and sorrowful). For someone to see this moment and want to frame it for their home...well...I'm left with no words.