Get ready to get to know me today! You’d think blogging personal work would be easy, but not for me! I am on my fourth Project 365, which means I take a photo everyday for the year and share them on my instagram. It’s a struggle to share the images monthly here (I have tried in previous years), but often fail to keep up with it. Click here to check out my instagram and follow along with my 365 this year! My work tends to be a lot of my children, but sometimes nature and light play with still life as well. As a Cleveland Photographer, I mostly share my client work here. However, everything you see here is my personal work.

Cleveland Photographer: Documentary Photography

Clearly, one of the reasons I do what I do is to document my children. Time flies. We all know it. I want to remember all of the things. This is why most of my personal work involves my kids. These images are everything to me! Just as a family loves going through their gallery after a session, I love looking through all of these photos of my own kiddos. A few recommendations… If you are going to do this consider giving your kids a hashtag. It doesn’t need to be their name, but something that represents them that no one else has used. That way, you can easily find all of their images on instagram. Additionally, I recommend PRINTING THEM. Not just to hang around the house, but in books too.

Storytelling

One thing most of my images have in common – whether it be client work or personal work is storytelling. To me, storytelling images make you feel something. Although not every image of mine does this, many tell some kind of story. This can happen when there aren’t even people in the image. Expressions, light, movement, color vs. black and white, composition, layers… all of these things add to a story. They set the mood and give you the feeling that is trying to be portrayed.

Humor

Another favorite category of my personal work is humor! Kids are funny. Experiences are funny. Sometimes all you can do is laugh! These are some of my favorite things to document. Just thinking of some of my favorite humorous images still bring a smile to my face today. It just so happens, that many “funny” images tend to tell really great stories as well. I also love the expressions that come with funny images as well.

Self Portraits

My kids often need breaks from being photographed so frequently. When this happens I look to none other than myself! As a Cleveland Photographer, I love to be able to share images with you of myself that tell more about who I am as well. This year I have taken on the challenge of trying to take at least one self portrait every week. Many of these include my favorite things such as storytelling, movement, light, color, etc. as well.

Nature

Often times I also just want to capture something beautiful in nature. There is so much beauty in the world. Colors, light, depth, texture, scale, and layers can make for some really gorgeous nature images. I would say I probably shoot nature images the least of everything else, but I still really enjoy it. As a Charlotte photographer I love having Lake Norman so close to use for some of my favorite nature shots!

Cleveland Photographer: The Voice Competition

Many of the grids you see in this blog post are images that I had entered into The Voice Competition. This was the first time I entered. It’s really hard to choose what images to share so I tried to stick with my own personal favorites. There were categories, though, so not every image of mine necessarily had a place to go. I enjoyed going through my work and looking at older as well as recent work to use. Seeing everything in these grids is also really neat to compare everything close to each other.

Thank you from your Cleveland Photographer

Thank you for taking the time to read through and check out the images of this blog! If my images are speaking to you please know that I do work in the Charlotte area!! I also offer family, newborn, branding/headshot, couples, and senior sessions. Check out these links to take you to the proper place in case you want to check out more: Charlotte Family Photographer, Charlotte Newborn Photographer, Charlotte Branding & Headshot Photographer, Charlotte Couples Photographer, Charlotte High School Senior Photographer. I would love to work with you!

Blog Circle

From time to time, I have the honor of sharing other incredible photographers through blog circles. Today Today I want to share my dear friend Jennifer’s blog, who shared a blog about a content session with Nature’s Pace LLC. Be sure to click the link and check it out! It’s all about a branding session she did last fall with a local outdoor program Nature’s Pace and is geared toward getting kids outside!