Behind the Scenes, Antigua

Today is Mariah's birthday! If you don't know Mariah, she's one of my best friends and is my most valuable work-mate. For much of my career she's done everything, from organizing my files, to providing deep emotional support and encouragement, to second shooting thousands of beautiful images, to helping me find my shoes after I lost them on a wedding day....because, yeah, I'm a mess when I'm working. She is truly the type A to my B and she's saved my ass more times than I can count. She tolerates my idiosyncrasies and usually joins in the insanity. Want to swim around in a drainage ditch in lake Erie in a beautiful dress? She'll join you. Need to up and leave a house you rented while traveling for work at 2am because you decided it's haunted? She'll zip up her suitcase and hold your hand while running like hell out out the door. Too exhausted to drive home after that? That's not a problem when you've got a friend who will load up on caffeine and belt out Fiona Apple's entire Tidal album with you at full-volume-top-of-the-lungs-passion.

Below are some personal images from our greatest work-friend adventure yet, the trip to Antigua we took a few months ago. You guys, Mariah still returns my phone calls and meets me for coffee, even after I booked an apartment on the island that was full of mosquitoes and cockroaches and completely lacking in hot water and adequate air conditioning. She's that kind of friend. 

In my truest fashion, I'm incredibly late on editing personal images. I dedicate them to her. I love you, lady. Thanks for letting me pet a thousand stray cats without judgement and for everything else you've ever done for me. 

Life, April 2016

Could it be spring again? Has one moment really shifted to the next and the next and the next until here, almost April? A month of birth and beginning upon us, such grace!  A photograph is a something and a nothing all at once. It's time standing still, just some pixels, just some paper. But more too! Our best family photographs should bring us hope of good things to come and gratitude for the things which have been. This collection I forgot to share last April. They filled me up this morning, burning warm still the memories of the warm earth and blossoming flowers. 

Iceland, part 1- we ate.

 Iceland feels like salt and smells like smoke and sea. I spent my time there eating, exploring and learning from Aran Goyoaga, the especially talented food stylist and blogger at Cannelle et Vanille.

I'm still asked often how I came to start making photographs. My love of photography originally grew from my love of food. It was an extension of the desire to capture life through recipes and kitchens.  I was smitten with Aran's work from the start. Even though food photography has not become part of my career, I jumped on the opportunity to dive headlong back into a world I used to know.

Aran talked about finding ways to highlight your physical environment in your work.  Iceland's food story is different than Pittsburgh's food story or an Appalachian food story. You have to be open to the story you're telling. In Iceland we told stories of fish and root vegetables. We also told the story of an island picnic, gorgeously prepared by Icelandic food writer and photographer Áslaug Snorradóttir.