Traveling Home, and back Home again.

This update is a bit overdue. I've been throwing myself into everything but this neglected blog, so the time has come to dust it off and give it some attention.

In the last month of 2010, Judd and I ventured back home to Oklahoma to visit our families. It was the one year anniversary of my Mom's and Grandmother's passing, and I couldn't bear the thought of being anywhere else but in my Oklahoma home to get through it.

There were also the birthdays of our niece Leslie and our newest nephew Stran, as well as my brother-in-law Joe, and to top it all off, two of our best friends were getting married. In short, it was a busy week and a half full of laughter, tears, heartache, and healing, and loads of driving. Of course, my camera made the trip with me to experience a healthy dose of documentation. Enjoy. :)


The trip started with the cats making us feel guilty for leaving.


We flew out of Seattle dark and early. Flying over Rainier is always a beautiful sight as the sun comes up.


ahhh, Oklahoma. As much as I joke about my homestate, or poke fun at it, it will always be home. I don't see much of this golden color here in the Evergreen State.


My beautiful nephew, Liam. I love his face framing. This is how he contains excitement, and it thrills me when he's happy to see me, of course!


This will never be easy. It's strange to feel so sad and so comforted simultaneously. The need to lay on the ground and cry comes and goes, and then you are happy to have any way to visit at all. I still firmly believe that Time doesn't heal such things, as you never really get over them. Time allows you to adjust to life as you know it, and grow used to that gaping hole in your life. I miss her every day.


During our stay with Judd's family, I got to somewhat assist with the cows. I mostly kept a tiny dog named Mindy from being stomped by hooves.


Meet Mindy. :)


Here's the birthday boy, Stran, with his Uncle Judd.


Wild child, Leslie, and my sister Jennifer, taming the Santa Fe Cattle Co. bull. :P


The one and only Joselyn, one of my soul mates. :)


Mr. & Mrs. Smith. :)

Then...the DRIVE home began. Yes, we flew home to Oklahoma, and drove back home to Washington. I put it that way because it is definitely possible to have more than one home. I realized that home can be anywhere as long as you are happy. I am happy when I'm with my family and friends, and am content with the miles between us because I know that these relationships are strong enough to handle ANYTHING. Meanwhile, I have found happiness and home in Bellingham with Judd and the fur children, Evan and Julian.

There's a great song by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zero's called "Home", and one line in the song says "Home is whenever I'm with you". I think that best defines my happiness with Judd. Our road trip home, while long and tiring, was a great experience, and of course, I have photos from that too. :)


My sister used to live in Wyoming, and when I called her from the road, she jokingly asked me if it was still ugly, lol...but I have to say, this is strikingly, almost hauntingly beautiful to me. There's something about endless fields of buffalo and pronghorn antelopes, and rolling hills covered in snow that makes my nomadic soul feel quite comforted.


Like I said....it's beautiful. To me. :)


Crossing into Utah was a pretty experience for me. It was getting later in the day, so it looks a bit drab and cold, but I had never been to Utah until this moment, so to me, it was a beautiful, new experience.


Oregon gave me a scare through the mountain passes. It turned into a winter wonderland up there, and I nearly had a panic attack behind the wheel, (i hadn't driven in nearly two years) but looking at the pictures leaves me in awe.


Snoqualmie Pass gave us similar treatment, but as a passenger, I could appreciate it a little more. :)

This state surprises me every day with how it makes me feel, behind the lens or simply living in it. It's why it's home. :) And I made it back home in one piece despite the distance and the weather. I made it home to my Dad's grandcats, and did it all driving my mother's car. Having that little extra bit of her here helps me through each day. It helps me continue to be that person that my friends and family, in this state or that, are somehow able to tolerate. :P


Yes, this troll. :P

The Little Things

I've been having some ups and downs lately. I work a lot, and I'm away from family and friends and am still missing my mother an incredible amount, as to be expected. It's times like these that you have to take it easy, somewhat give yourself a break, and let the little things round out your day and pull you through.

Being a photographer is a very therapeutic thing. Take you camera with you everywhere as I tend to do and you can document a LOT of little things in your life. Then they are there for you later when you need them, and of course, there's always more things laying around for you to take pictures of. :P

I thought I'd share a few pictures of some of the things that tend to keep me happy and grounded.



Nature. It isn't exactly a little thing when you think about it, but stopping to spend time in it definitely is one of the little therapeutic things you can do to cheer up. :)



Leaves. Do you ever just stop and listen or watch them blow in the wind? It's pretty peaceful. I'd recommend just looking up from time to time as you walk. So many people watch their feet when they walk. Open your eyes and look around. :D



Be silly and laugh at yourself. I tend to thrive on this. :P This photo came from me being bored and using a face mask one night. And obviously, it was a rough hair day...but you know, those happen and you might as well make it fun.



Tap into your inner child. Haha, in this case, I played with my food. It didn't seem to mind! :P



Listen to music. This is a photo of The Gallus Brothers, a local band who just happens to be absolutely incredible. I see them every chance I get. :D

Anyhoo. I needed a pick-me-up. I hope you guys got something out of it. :)

Framed Prints

Hello! Long time, no blog. Things have been crazy for me lately, but I have something fun that everybody can start to participate in. :D


As some of you have heard, I have started to browse through some of my shots in an attempt to sort and possibly print and/or frame some of them. My ultimate goal is to start getting some work framed or at least matted, and then possibly attempt to get them hung in local businesses. Just to get my work out there would be nice. To get it seen outside of this blog, facebook, or flickr would be great. I love living in this city and would love to possibly get a professional looking portfolio together and see where it goes. :D

So, I'm going to share a few photos in this post. If you guys would be so kind as to tell me which ones you think would be great framed, I would be ever so grateful. I take so many photos, sometimes it's hard to start sorting through them, and I'm very guilty of looking through my photos and second guessing them and never letting half of them see the light of day. I'm striving to be more open so I can get more feedback and see where it takes me. So here goes. I hope you enjoy looking through them and choosing your favorites. :D

June the 6th.

I photographed my first Bellingham wedding today. It was a small, intimate wedding and the couple were incredibly sweet, gentle souls who I came to care about almost immediately. I'm thoroughly exhausted, yet I couldn't wait to go through the pictures and at least get a few ready for viewing tonight. So without further adieu, here's a preview. :D







Hope you guys like them so far. :)

Human Subjects

I would mostly call myself a landscape or nature photographer, being as those things are my favorite things to photograph, but I sometimes ache to photograph people. I'm not necessarily a portrait photographer though. It is a type of photography I wouldn't mind mastering some day, but I often find myself more comfortable alone in the wilderness, with an ipod and my camera. Very rarely do I venture into a social setting and capture people for who they are. When I do, it's normally from afar, with more of a street or documentary feel to the pictures. Heaven forbid, I actually arrange a shoot and ask them to smile and look at me! But it has happened, and the times that it has, I have definitely enjoyed it. So today, I'm going to post a few pictures I have taken of people. My favorites. :D Hope you enjoy them!

Up first are Josh and Rebecca. I took their engagement photos for them, and it was just a fun time to be outdoors with these two and try to capture the sweetness and beauty of their relationship. :)



Here are a few shots of one of my best friends, Jessica. She'll argue to the death about how good of a subject she is, but my sister has shot photos of her too and we both enjoyed working with her and the end results, so she can just suck it up. :P





Next up are my niece and nephew. My niece Joselyn has been the main one to pose for me, but I have managed to snap Liam as well. I also have Hunter, Leslie, and Stran, but I have yet to do a sit down shoot with them, so some of their photos may come later. After all, some of the best photos come from when they aren't expecting it. Especially with children. They tend to think that a camera always means you can stick your tongue out or put your finger up your nose. :P Joselyn, however, is a natural and super photogenic, so I'll post a few intentional poses from her, and then you'll meet Liam :P

First up is Joselyn in her Sally costume. She LOVES The Nightmare Before Christmas, and my sister made the dress and drew on her stitches. We took her to a cemetery to try and capture a little bit of Halloween town, but took them during the day for fun (and less spooks. She was pushing 5 at the time. :P)




Here is her little brother, Liam, who is a joy to photograph and just spend time with. He is one of the sweetest little angels on the planet, and I think you can tell that through his photos.



Here are a few more engagement photos, this time of my friends Ian and Desirea, who, as of this morning, just had a new baby, Allison, who I can't wait to meet. :D



Just recently, I took photos of some friends of mine. They are so fresh that I am still currently going through them and sorting, cropping, you name it. :D But I have a few ready, so here they are. Meet Kelly and Colin, some of my Bellingham friends. Their photos turned out so well that they may very well get their own blog once I'm done with all of their photos. :D



I love taking pictures of my family and friends when they are unaware. Here is my brother-in-law (might as well be!) Tyler, at his wedding rehearsal. I gave him copies of this photo at Christmas that year. His reaction: "I didn't even know you took it!"

What can I say? I'm an assassin. :P


I seem to capture Judd the best when he's least expecting it. Otherwise, he'll walk out of frame and refuse a photo, or give me a mean glare, lol. I may be biased, but I think he's a beautiful subject.




Here is one of my best friends, Christen, when we went to get tattoos together. Watching her get these tattoos, and having her there to hold my hand during mine was one of my top life experiences thus far. I guess you just had to be there.


I could do this all day, but I'm going to wrap it up with a few more pictures. Since it's fair to say that I know how to operate a camera, and also know best how my own face looks when photographed, I have been known to do self portraits. Don't we all? But I will say it's fun to have profile pictures that aren't the mirror reflection kind. :P Though we've ALL been guilty of those. Here's a few of me.

One with blonde hair. Throughout my 28 years, I've had my hair every color under the sun. :P


I had this one framed for my mom around Mother's Day, 2009.


and prior to Mother's Day, 2010, after her passing, my computer hard drive completely crashed and I feared I had lost everything photo-wise, including the last photos of her that I got to take. By some miracle, the hard drive was restored, and I got this beautiful photo of my mother at her last Ren Faire with her girls back. :)


We were regulars at The Castle of Muskogee for years. It is currently going on this month and I'm not back home to go, but a part of me knows it wouldn't be the same without her. I miss her very much and I'm beyond grateful that all of my photos were restored. To see her smiling face is a very positive thing for me. :)

Well, thanks for reading. I tried not to talk too much but I still had to introduce the photos. :P I might do a second blog with more of my people photos. I forgot how many I had!

My feathered friends...

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
and never stops at all.

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.


As a lover of nature, I have to admit that one of my favorite things about being outdoors comes in the form of birds. My great, great Grandmother was an avid birdwatcher, and I have grown up with a great appreciation for them. Not only are they beautiful to watch, but they are about the only things that can wake up me before the sun rises and get away with it.

I have had birds as pets before, and known numerous people who have owned birds, and for a few summers, I had the wonderful opportunity to work briefly with a Falconer at an annual Renaissance Faire in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Since moving to Washington, one of my favorite things about the place has been the massive population of seagulls.

Long story short, I have a great appreciation and love for all of the different types of birds in the world. There are so many to see and photograph, and they aren't the easiest creatures to capture, but when you do snap a clean shot of one and look back through your photos, you can't help but feel happy about it all. :)


Sometimes you only get the opportunity to see specific animals in a zoo when you grow up in Central Oklahoma, but that doesn't have to take away from the detail of their pretty feathers and faces. I loved these two, and they were very well taken care of.


I LOVE owls. Snowy owls in particular. I had an amazing experience with an owl at my old home in Ada, Oklahoma. I was outside late at night, having just gotten home from a night spent at my sister's house. I lived alone at the time, and my dad had worried about me doing so, so he parked his old truck in my driveway to make the house look more occupied. I was trying to get into the house through the side door next to the driveway, and the motion sensor light just would NOT come on. I scrambled with my keys and tried to see in the dark before I heard a strange swooshing, following by a heavy clanging sound on the truck. Only when I whipped around did the light come on, and I found myself face to face with an owl, perched on the truck, staring at me. I'd never seen one in that area of Oklahoma. He was absolutely stunning, and I only have the mental image to go with it, but ever since that moment, looking into that bird's eyes, I have had an even deeper fondness for owls than I had before.


Bald eagles. Absolutely gorgeous creatures. Prior to Washington, I mostly saw them in pictures. Even Oklahoma zoos didn't have these beautiful beasties. Now, every once in a while, you spot one in the sky, or in fields off the sides of the highways, or even in trees close to the roads if you know where to look. I snapped pictures of this big guy when Judd and I took a trip to the Nooksack River one day. The picture doesn't do him justice, but I'm proud of it all the same. He was huge, regal, and awe-inspiring, and I never wanted to leave him. I could have taken thousands of photos of his face and never grown tired of it. The photos I did take upset me at first, because my camera had been on a soft focus setting the entire time and I hadn't noticed. I was so carried away snapping a mental picture that I couldn't properly focus on the permanent ones. When a friend said that the bird was gorgeous but the photos were....eh...not so much...my heart sank a bit because it meant the world to me to photograph these birds. I have to take the experience as a whole, and not focus so much on the end result. I will live here for a long time, and will have more opportunities with better cameras in time, but one person's critique doesn't have to ruin the main point, and that is that a goal was reached. I photographed bald eagles for the first time and massively enjoyed myself.


This cute little bird was snapped back in Oklahoma. I love the slight little aura he seems to be giving off. My old yard was full of trees and was quite spacious, despite being surrounded by neighbors on a dead end street. The lot was quiet, and you could feel at peace outside despite being in town. I have always imagined myself living in the middle of nowhere, with no neighbors. That house provided that feeling, but you had the added comfort of knowing that people were close by if you happened to need them. I loved venturing outside and snapping photos of the little birds as they visited my trees. They were much more welcome visitors than the squirrels.


This photo isn't perfect by any means, but I still like it a lot. This duck sat with me at Lake Padden here in Bellingham for about an hour, just cleaning his feathers, sipping drinks from the lake, and looking over his wing at me from time to time before finally wading out into the water and away from our little patch of sand we'd shared. My family spent one summer raising ducks, and we often used to raise abandoned baby cottontail rabbits that we found in our yard, releasing them once they seemed able to take care of themselves. Since that summer with our own ducks, I have always loved them. We released our batch at a local park, and for years, I would search for and feed my old duck with all of the other park visitors.


This is Valkyrie. She is the Harris hawk that I got to help showcase for back to back summers at the Ren Faire. Her story was incredibly sweet. She had been captured by some people, who attempted to keep her as a pet. When this was proving to be an incredible failure, she came into the hands of my Falconer friend, Bob. For years, he helped her recuperate and attempted to release her into the wild. For over 10 years now, she has been released and has always returned to Bob and his family and refuses to go away permanently, despite their attempts and urging for her to return to the wild. She has become a bit of a permanent fixture at the Castle of Muskogee Ren Faire, where she is known as Lady Valkyrie. She's absolutely gorgeous, and I'll never forget that piercing gaze.


This crane was a popular local back at Wintersmith Park, in Ada. I have countless pictures of him and a few friends. This picture makes me smile the most. He was way out in the middle of the lake, just wading around with his long, graceful legs, looking absolutely serene. I imagine he still keeps other hobby photographers company. I see many of his cousins here in Bellingham. :)

Like this guy:




Woodpeckers are another bird I have never been very lucky with when it comes to capturing them, until this photo. Judd and I were out for a small hike one afternoon near Larrabee State Park, when we kept hearing him and couldn't locate him. After looking for a while, we finally came upon him and his brilliant red mohawk, just going to town on the bark of the tree. I remember hearing these birds a lot in Arkansas when I spent summers there. The forest areas of Bellingham remind me a lot of my summers at my grandparents' house, running around in the woods without any concept of time.


And last but not least are my favorite local hooligans. I have never seen such ridiculous birds in all of my life. I guess you could technically label them as pests of sorts, but I view them as quirky, eccentric birds and they make me laugh a lot. They are literally EVERYWHERE. Judd refers to them as "rats with wings", and he rather enjoys telling his personal story where he witnessed one attempting to snatch a baby bottle from a single mother. I take more pictures of these guys at Boulevard Park in Fairhaven than anything else. They just make me smile, and something that can do that for you is never a bad thing. :)

One more gull photo for the road. I hope you guys enjoyed the bird pics. :)