Newborn Photography: Which Style is Right for You?
I love love love newborn photography. It is such an honor to meet these tiny people when they are so fresh and squishy and to be invited to crash your new baby party for a few hours. I want to explain a little bit about the two main types of newborn sessions: so-called “lifestyle” and “posed”.
With this ring...
As a wedding photographer on Martha’s Vineyard, one of my favorite parts of photographing a wedding is when I ask the newly-married couple if I can borrow their rings for a few minutes. I always look for some significant element of a couple’s story and use that to frame your rings.
Fresh 48 Sessions: Meeting Your Baby
A so-called “Fresh 48” shoot happens typically within the first two days (or 48 hours) of life - often while baby and parents are still in the hospital getting to know each other. I love these sessions because it is an opportunity to capture all the little details of a new baby, often before they’ve even fully opened their eyes or dried off their heads.
Hanna and Michael: A Farm Neck Wedding, Martha's Vineyard
A September wedding on Martha’s Vineyard doesn’t get much more perfect. For Hanna and Michael, her parent’s summer home on the Lagoon was the meaningful location to start the celebration
Newborn photography: because your baby never gets any smaller
I remember when my first daughter - now a kindergartener, tall and rangy as a colt - was born, I felt the weight of human clichés that suddenly became absolute deepest human truth. How you are not possibly “ready” for this new and oh-so-needy lumpish thing to utterly dismantle your world.
Julianne and Rob: Vanderhoop Homestead, Martha's Vineyard Wedding
One of my most important jobs as your wedding photographer is understanding the role that photographs play, how photographs shape and contain memories when actual memory fades - and I love to curate the story of your day for generations to come.
Family Photography Style Guide (AKA What Should We Wear??)
One of the most common questions that families ask me when we are planning their photo session is about what to wear. My advice is that, well, it depends, but a major difference between a casual snapshot and an heirloom photo you want to hang on the wall for generations often comes down to the clothes that you choose to wear.
Erin and Josh: An Atria Wedding in August
For Erin and Josh, their tale is as old as covid: a large celebration was planned pre-pandemic, and then changed to a small celebration, before finally returned to a large celebration of friends and family gathered together (mostly to party) after the official marriage already happened.
Mœmpowered: The Mammal Body Celebration
Inspired by the 4th Trimester Bodies Project, Mœmpowered Sessions was a photo project to celebrate moms and the power of our bodies, to show off the work that we have done and continue to do and the diversity that we live within.
A Lamb is Born: Birth Photography of Another Kind
I love photographing birth. It’s my favorite genre. So you can imagine my sorrow with most hospitals not allowing more than just one accompanying person right now and you can imagine my longing to shoot something being born. That’s why February is extra exciting at Slough Farm: the ewes are lambing!
Newborn, redux
Just as having my second child recently compelled me to revisit my maternity photos, I wanted to look again at my newborn photography because the babies are one of my favorite subjects to photograph.
When new parents ask me why they need newborn photography, this is what I tell them: how these sleepy days will not stay in your memory, how the curl of a tiny leg that was just recently still inside your body will soon unfold, and how your baby will grow into their features and never look like they do now again.
My Favorite Things 2020
2020 has been some kind of year, but lots of beautiful families still got lots of beautiful (socially-distanced) photographs with me, so this year I ran a contest on my Facebook page to say goodbye to 2020 and to celebrate the love and connection I try to capture in every session.
Viewers voted on their own favorite photo, but I’ve collected here a few of my own from 2020.
Maternity, redux
I recently had my second child and so I wanted to revisit the photos I’ve taken for other repeat moms.
The gauzy flow is very popular right now and I love to employ it, as well. There’s something about the contrast between solid body and fluid shapes that is evocative of the water that births us all.
Dani and Dan, A Love That Grows
They say that rain on your wedding day is good luck, because water makes a knot tighter
Bruce and Liz, A September Wedding on Martha's Vineyard
Photographing not one but two fellow photographers made me nerve-wracked for this wedding, but the outcome was a calm and lovely celebration with close family.
Love in the Time of Covid, vol. 2 (Paul and Beth and Harry)
Another small celebration of a big love
Love in the Time of Covid, vol. 1 (Beka and Nick)
On a blustery Vineyard May day, I was there to document a re-arranged wedding day for Beka and Nick. The pandemic took much from us, but love prevails.
Birth Photography, part 2
I always knew that I was born at home and that there was documentation of the event, but I was in my mid-20s before I felt ready to watch the video – soundless, grainy and dark – and I wished that I had watched it sooner. Getting to see myself in those earliest moments of my own life was so incredibly surreal and marvelous.
Rachel and Dejan, Nobnocket Love
As a photographer, I always try to document the big picture and the small details, - the weight of memory we all carry and the photographs that help us hold it.
Joe and Brianna, A Vineyard Elopement
Long before Covid forced (or, some might say, inspired) couples to rethink cozy, small celebrations of a big love were still a hit. And so it was for Brianna and Joe, who came up the Vineyard for their November elopement.