I come from a large family of 7, with 14 nieces/nephews, & 6 great nieces/nephews. I know the importance of family, of generations of family. I also understand the importance of documenting lifetimes.
See, growing up there was always a loaded camera hanging around the house. We photographed everything, my mother brought it everywhere. Birthdays, holidays, or random any days, the camera was out and taking pictures of our family. We had many bulging photo albums of every moment of our childhood, we looked through them often as kids. I think this left an impression on me, it’s what created my passion for photographing people.
Being able to capture a memory & preserve someone's history through photographs is the aspect of photography I love the most. I strive to give my clients a relaxed, fun experience that highlights your unique personalities. An experience that creates memories. To capture your history & preserve your legacy for generations to come.
~MY PHILOSOPHY~
The Power of a Photograph & How they can Preserve Legacies
Portraits are my passion, my number one reason for picking up my camera. I
think learning about people & who they are is interesting, and beautiful, and captivating. I've always loved the idea of capturing that in a photograph.
When you lose someone you really care about, those photographs, those simple moments....well, they become everything. Life is SO fleeting, time passes by, life moves along quickly, & people pass on before you know it. We want to believe our memories won't fail us, and the ability to recall just how our mother smiled will easily appear in our mind. It wasn't until I was much older that I really grasped the importance of capturing that, and it only drives my passion further. My mother has been gone over 20 years now. I can tell you, it gets harder to recall. If not for the family photos of her, I'd probably not remember her face very well by now. Time does that, age does that, whether we like it or not. But photographs, they are stopped moments in time. This person, who they were, how they looked, and the subtleties of expression and body language that defines them and only them can be encapsulated in a photograph. To look at a portrait, and to feel the way you would if this person you lost is there in the room with you, well that's... that's just everything.
So when my husband died suddenly at the end of 2017, at only the age of 42, this concept of preserving a persons legacy became my mission. In a stroke of simple luck I'd convinced him to let me make some updated portraits of him only three months prior to his death...the fates must of known. Of course I didn't know it at the time, but that portrait would be a point of comfort for not only myself, but also his Mother, Sister, and Grandmother. I'm grateful we took them. I'm grateful I was able to give his family something they could have for generations, so when his great nieces and nephews ask about him, when the family is telling stories about this wonderful man, they'll have that portrait to look at. A frame of reference to attach those memories and keep him alive in our hearts forever. We all deserve that, because our stories are important, our family's legacy is important. More now than ever before.~Maggie
