Since I was a little girl I was obsessed with fairy tales. Grimm tales and Hans Christian Andersen tales were by far some of the favorites. Once I watched two seasons of "Once Upon A Time" tv show all in one day!
My love of fairy tales seems to transfer onto my pictures and I was told many times that they have a magical feel to them.
Creating these images is extremely time consuming. The one above took me two days to create.
What most people don't realize is that taking pictures is a very small part of my process and editing takes up most of my time.
On average it takes me about five hours to create a single image. Sometimes a little less and sometimes a lot longer.
The challenge lies in creating realistic images. The right light and right tones all play a very crucial part in that. You have to pay a lot of attention to the tiniest details. I've noticed that whenever I rush through a project it never comes out quite right.
I usually have a certain vision in mind of what type of images I want to create, but I always like to observe and let things evolve around me. Some of my best images were unplanned and were completely spontaneous. Like the one above is one of my most popular pictures.
It was completely unplanned. In fact I was just done taking some beautiful pictures of her in the lavender fields and when she was done she began running around and playing with her friends. Real quick I got out my camera and snapped a few shots of her, and I'm so glad I did.
People used to ask me all the time on what my favorite subjects are to shoot and back in the day I couldn't give a straight answer. I liked all sorts of photography. If I could take a picture of it, then I loved it. But now, I'm noticing that I'm really enjoying shooting children the most. There is a sense of realness to them.
The smaller they are the harder it becomes to control the session and you are forced to go with the flow. This little one pictured above just turned one and did not want to stay still. So I just let her run through the forest and snapped as many shots as I could, hoping I would get a few good ones.
I'm 99% outdoor photographer. I love nature and try to implement the relationship between the subjects and the natural world around them. It's becoming more and more challenging trying to find nice meadows and fields uninhibited by people and whenever I find one I get so excited as if I won a lottery.
Shooting strictly outdoors comes with many challenges. The most difficult one is weather. I live in Seattle and as you probably know it rains here at least six months out of the year. I never know if it's going to be nice or not and I have to be prepared for everything.
I got really lucky with this picture above. It just snowed in the mountains but not enough for the roads to be closed, so I was able to get this nice snow shot. It's actually a funny story. I guess the snow boots that the girl was wearing were old, because as we began our hike toward the spot both her soles fell completely off! She was so determined though that she toughed out through the entire session, but was completely freezing towards the end. I had to run back to the car and get her spare boots because she couldn't walk back in hers.
Photography definitely has many challenges, but I love what I do so much that I'm always overlooking the challenges and always look forward to my next session. Please visit my website for more information.