Family Portraiture in Florida
Since I've relocated from my home state of Kentucky to my personal version of paradise here in New Smyrna Beach, I am so excited to shift my focus more towards capturing family relationships through portraiture.
Over the last several years, working primarily as a wedding photographer, I have developed a keen eye and almost immediate intuition about when exactly to press the shutter button to capture within a fraction of a second a perfect representation of how people relate to one another. Weddings have taught me so much about life in general, but specifically about capturing candid expressions of relation that tell stories with no words.
That is what interests me most about photographing people--my work isn't just about lining everyone up and making a formal document of who was there and what happened and how you looked staring blankly into the camera with a jaw aching from fake smiles. I have so many ideas drawn from these experiences that will take family portraiture to an entire different level. Capturing your family, within the amazing beauty of natural surroundings, planned for the best light and conditions (but prepared for anything!), will be an experience that both represents the best of your daily life and relationships with each other and yet also somehow transcends it as well.
I don't want everyone to wear a white shirt and khaki shorts/skirts/pants, barefoot on the beach. I don't want everyone lined up against the perfect sunset or sunrise, perfectly arranged and perfectly fake. Really, whose lives does that really represent? It may be a lovely portrait, or a good likeness, you might even be having that perfect hair day (at the beach? good luck!)--but what in the world is a portrait like that saying about who you are, what you mean to each other, how you react and interact with one another? What is it saying at all besides, "we were here at this particular time, we wore things we never would in real life, and we smiled at the camera against a pretty background."
My family portraiture is an entirely different experience, an entirely different style. Hard to describe with words, but easy to see in so much of my work from the past. I want to capture your family living, breathing, running, hugging, laughing, playing--whatever it is, but I will capture you being real. I will capture the essence of your love and relationships among each other. I am so excited to shift my focus to capturing the real beauty of a family's love in a beautiful natural setting--nothing fake allowed!