It's funny traveling to a city that's at once all the way across the country and yet so familiar. Now on my third trip to Portland, while the city doesn't feel like "home" precisely, I've found it easy to jump right into the rhythm of life here without even thinking about it.

One of the best part of traveling from East coast to West is the time change: the only way I function decently after getting up at 7:30am is when it actually feels like 10:30! I walked the girls to the bus stop as usual, then quickly got ready and headed off to my first meeting of the day, a wedding consult for a couple whose engagement photos I shot last year.

Meet the Photographer || Betting on Myself

Music has been an essential part of my life for as long as I can remember: I don't start driving without choosing a song, I immediately turn on a playlist when I get home, I live for seeing live shows. There are certain songs and records that define each and every period of my life. For the past 6.5 years - since I left home and set off on the journey towards "adulthood" or whatever this is - Imagine Dragons (the band) has provided me with the majority of these tracks. I could discuss them for days, but the best of them all that literally gave me the defining moment to move forward into a new phase of my life is "Bet My Life" off their sophomore album Smoke and Mirrors.

2018 Goals

Each year, right around Christmas, I evaluate my goals from the ending year and then write out my goals for the coming year. I them let them sit for a few weeks while I evaluate other metrics - making sure that these are the goals that really resonate - and eventually come back to them during the first week of the new year to write this blog post. This year I've been so busy that I'm just now getting to it!

Nonetheless, I'm more than a little excited about this coming year. While each of the past 6 years has brought be a step closer to my ultimate career goals, this coming year is the first one where I feel like I'm really on the right track towards doing exactly what I want to be doing. It took me a while to figure out that exact intersection where my skills, enthusiasm for the work and ability to help people all coincide to create my "calling", but I'm only 24 so it's hard to complain. So, without further ado, here are my intended plans for 2018!

Katie + Mario's Manassas National Battlefield Park Engagement Session

This past May, I'd planned a trip up to Washington, D.C. with my mom for a girls' weekend of museum-going and visiting family. As we were emailing back-and-forth, my uncle asked if I could bring my camera gear (I don't go anywhere without it so that was a given!) because he and my aunt wanted to do an anniversary shoot. I loved the idea (and still do - we should do that next time I'm in town!) and we had it all planned for the afternoon after mom and I had landed. Little did I know, we were in for a big surprise!

Ireland Day 5: Summits and Sunsets

Despite the extra 26 hours soaking up the wonderful, clean air of the Newark airport, we'd had a surprisingly full rest of the trip, so I wasn't expecting much on our last day. Per usual, we had no plans - dad and Jake weren't even sure they were going to go anywhere. I'd spent several hours the night before searching train routes trying to maximize our daylight without having to get up at an ungodly hour, but I kept finding my mind wandering back to Killiney Hill, hoping to catch the sunset that I'd left too early for previously that week.

December 30, 2017 Church Wedding in Baxter, TN

What better way to close out the year than to celebrate love! We got to travel over the mountain to capture Kristie and Ethan's December vows and though it never got above freezing, the warmth of this couple's happiness was almost enough to forget the chill.

2017: Love and Lessons

New Year's Eve has always been one of my favorite holidays. Not for the parties or the food (okay, maybe the food) but because it's a collective time of reflection and refocusing. I've always been a very goal-oriented person (which is both a blessing and a curse) so for my business, this gives me a very specific deadline to analyze not only the growth and financial status of my business, but also gauge my passion for the work I've been doing and decide what I want to pursue further. I'll discuss in my next post what my goals are for the year, but as it's still 2017 for a couple hours, I want to look back at the goals I set for myself this time last year and reflect on just how beautiful this year was for me.

So here, in the same order as I wrote them last year, are my 2017 goals and how well they played out:

Ireland Day 4: A Breath of Fresh Air in Howth

I'm writing this post almost a week after the day in question, but strangely, I can still see every minute of the day clearly. Perhaps, this is because our excursion to Howth played to each of our senses.

Immediately after disembarking the train, we were hit with a sudden pleasant silence; a melodic hum of waves crashing punctured every-so-often by the oddly harmonic call of seagulls - an auditory break from the constant buzzing of the city.

Ireland Day 3: Color, Culture and Conquering

I slept like a rock the first night here, but ever since it's felt like I'm sleeping ON a rock. It took so long to fall asleep Monday night that I accidentally slept hours later than I meant to Tuesday morning and woke up at 11am. I didn't want to waste any more of the day, so I went straight to breakfast grabbing a sausage roll and coffee from a cafe down the street. I'd initially planned to eat there but on this busy morning there were no tables, so I got food as takeaway and started walking back to the hotel, resigning myself to eat in the lobby. Happenstance intervened, and I walked by a cathedral right as my laden hands were about to drop my phone and food, so I quickly dashed to the steps to readjust before continuing walking. But, then I took a bite of sausage roll. And another. The food was so delicious and the steps and walkway so peaceful that I decided to simply enjoy my breakfast right then and there.

Ireland Day 2: Gold, Black and Ruby Red

Because of its latitude, Ireland sees little daylight during the winter months with the run rising around 8:30am and setting at 4pm. The sun also remains low in the sky, casting a constant golden light throughout the day. As someone who is most certainly not a morning person, golden hour at noon is definitely a concept I can stand behind!

Ireland Day 1: Worth the Wait

Our very first introduction to the country was landing on a runway fenced in to keep out the cows not 20 feet away. That was a new one for me! We made a beeline for the hotel where Dad and Jake stayed (and Jake slept for the next 6 hours until dinner) and I set off in search of transportation to my shoot an hour away. I'd worried most about the flight delay because I'd scheduled a family shoot for Sunday late morning, thinking that would give me plenty of time to adjust and get my bearings, but having to learn on the fly was just as well.

Portland Day 1: All of My Favorite Things

I started off my first full day in Portland bright and early, catching the bus at 7:30 to get over to Cathedral Park for my first session. I was really hoping that since it was actually 10:30am in Asheville I might have an easier time waking up, but no such luck. So with bleary eyes, I transferred to the MAX along with every other person in Beaverton and attempted to not stick out as we bumped and jostled our way along. I certainly can't speak for everyone, but whenever I travel I always feel this need to look as un-touristy as possible (perhaps a reflex from being an American abroad), but trying to look unmoved as I repeatedly jolted from side-to-side, white-knuckling the hand rail, was a bit difficult. It did wake me up though!

Creating Your Photo Album

Next to capturing your big day, creating the photo album to memorialize your special moments is my favorite part of the process. To aid you in our creation process, I've put together some step-by-step directions for choosing the specs of your album.

Iceland & Scotland Day 3: The Old Town

Much to the girls' (and my) satisfaction, we got to ride the double decker buses today! As there were no seats left, I stood at the front, gazing out the window as the city whizzed by. I've always wished the US - but particularly the South - had a better, more widely-used public transit system as my favorite part of traveling in Europe is people-watching on buses or the subway and not having to drive. I'd become so accustomed to standing up on the halting metro that I simply leaned against the wall of the bus without needing to hold on to the hand rail (yeah, I'm totally cool.)

Meadow + Theo's Granite City Engagement Session

It's not every session that I get to rock hop through a cool new location AND capture the love of a couple of free spirits. Not often do I have the opportunity to shoot from exaggerated angles both high and low. And very rarely do I get to shimmy through rock crevices so narrow I have to hold my cameras in one hand and backpack in the other as I slide through sideways. Yet, I got to do all of these things last month for Meadow and Theo's engagement session!

Mudiyanur Family Photo Album

Every album comes with its own set of storytelling challenges and for family albums, that challenge is generally making sure each person has their fair share of page space. For this album, we used a mix of sibling photos, spreads with all three girls (the sisters plus their cousin), and a few individual pages and spreads to give each sister the spotlight.

Bohemian Sunset Styled Shoot at Black Balsam Knob

This was one of those shoots where I saw the location (on a shoot I was modeling for, of all things) and without any plans in place immediately created a scene in my head to shoot that I knew I needed to bring to reality. I knew I wanted Lauren, one of my gorgeous 2017 brides, to model and that if at all possible I wanted to put her in a whimsical gown from one of my favorite Asheville bridal shops (Wildflower Bridal) paired with a bright color palette from Swannanoa Flower shop and Cakes by Gray for a bohemian mountaintop styled elopement. As the shoot would have to be right in the middle of wedding season to make sure it was warm enough, I knew it would be a long shot, so when every one of these selections worked out, I was so excited I was bouncing off the walls! Of course, no shoot is ever that easy and in the end we only had about 25 minutes or so of photography, yet I couldn't be more thrilled with the results.

Washington DC Day 1: A Monumental Adventure

Whereas 2016 was the year of international travel for me, I've spent 2017 exploring cities a little "closer" to home. Initially, I got the idea to spend a weekend in the nation's capital because I wanted to take advantage of Allegiant's new direct flights out of Asheville (the reason for my NYC trip in February) but I also wanted to make it a girls' weekend with my mom. As this [$87 round trip] flight would've landed us at BWI and we'd planned to stay with family in South Riding, VA, we would've had to take a 2.5 hour metro trek from the airport to their home (totally worth it to me!) but in the end we decided to simply fly out of Knoxville and pay more. So, from the outset, the trip was shaping up to be different than I'd originally planned and this was only the first of many surprises!