Sweet Evangeline was born so fast I didn't get many images on the night of her birth - but we more than made up for it with her newborn session. I LOVE this gorgeous family - their graciousness and their honest connection with each other. This shoot sums up my approach to photographing newborns. The images are relaxed and REAL and they include all the sweet details of diaper changes and breastfeeding and family snuggles. I feel so honored when families invite me into their postpartum bubble to capture these memories. I'm excited to watch this family grow together for many years to come.

I love to photograph mamas and their babies from behind. That's how I always remember my babies. Staring down at them from that perspective for so many hours - you wonder if you can hold every detail of their faces forever in your mind. A photo like… — I love to photograph mamas and their babies from behind. That's how I always remember my babies. Staring down at them from that perspective for so many hours - you wonder if you can hold every detail of their faces forever in your mind. A photo like this feel like a memory.

Look how much she changed in just a few days! Great Grandma came to town and I just had to grab a photo of these two holding hands.

A new website, a new blog - two months into a new year. It's a lot of change. I've been away from any real blogging for a few years now. It started to feel like too much work to live my life AND present it in some beautifully packaged form. I edited my words and my photos mercilessly until they just wouldn't come anymore.

It was also a huge burden to keep my business blogging so divorced from my personal thoughts and the events of my own life. As though these things could ever be neatly separated. Being a birth photographer, a woman, a mother, a creative - it's all intimately connected.

So now I return to blogging with a promise to myself: That it doesn't have to be perfect. That it doesn't have to match some ridiculous notion of what "professional" looks or sounds like. I'm declaring this space to be about connection over perfection.

I give myself permission to show up imperfectly.

I give myself permission to play.

I give myself permission to explore creativity for the pure joy of it.

I give myself permission to make mistakes.

I give myself permission to claim this small corner of the internet as my very own. A place to connect with my people - to talk to my people.

Are you my people? If so - Welcome! I'll be showing up here the best that I know how and I invite you to do the same if you'd like. So tell me, friend, what are you giving yourself permission to do in 2018?

*Photo by Courtney Holmes Photography