People often ask me how I became a photographer. The funny thing is...I didn't just stumble into it. Photography has always been there, quietly waiting for me. Back in high school, you could usually find me bouncing between two very different worlds: photography and computer science. I loved both equally. One taught me how to create through logic, the other taught me how to create through feeling.

Life, as it tends to do, had other plans.

The camera found its way onto a shelf for a while. Not because I stopped loving photography, but because adulthood has a funny way of convincing us that passions can wait until there's more time. (Spoiler alert: there never seems to be more time.)

Years later, while I was caring for my grandmother full time, I picked up my camera again. At first, I wasn't photographing people. I was photographing quiet.

The way sunlight filtered through Spanish moss.

Wildflowers that most people drove right past.

Tiny mushrooms after the rain.

The curve of a fern unfolding.

Morning fog drifting over the river.

Nature has always been my sanctuary.

It asks nothing of you except that you slow down long enough to notice and maybe that's what photography was teaching me all along, not how to use a camera, but how to see.

Then I started photographing my oldest daughter.

Like every parent, I became completely convinced that every single thing she did deserved to be documented. Every messy smile, every muddy adventure, every expression that lasted only a split second. She became my favorite little model, although I'm fairly certain snacks were the only reason she agreed to most of it.

Somewhere between chasing golden light through fields and asking, "Can you smile just one more time?" I realized something. Photography wasn't about perfect pictures. It was about preserving pieces of people before life quietly changed them. Friends started asking me to photograph their families. Then strangers trusted me with their milestones. Before I knew it, I had photographed engagements, growing families, motherhood, babies, and all the beautifully ordinary moments in between and I loved every one of them.

But this year, something shifted. For a long time I thought I wanted to photograph families. Now I realize I was always being drawn to the women inside those families. The mothers who were always behind the camera instead of in front of it. The daughters trying to figure out who they were becoming. The women rediscovering themselves after years of putting everyone else first. The grandmothers whose hands quietly held generations together.

Again and again, I noticed the same thing.

Before I even lifted my camera, women would apologize.

"I'm awkward."

"I'm not photogenic."

"I've gained weight."

"I don't know what to do."

As if they needed to explain why they deserved to exist in a photograph. That has never made sense to me because standing behind my camera, I don't see the things women criticize about themselves.

I see stories.

I see resilience.

I see softness that somehow exists alongside incredible strength.

I see laughter lines earned honestly.

I see eyes that have weathered grief, joy, exhaustion, and hope and are somehow still full of light.

Maybe that's why photographing women feels so deeply personal to me. I know what it feels like to lose pieces of yourself too.

I become someone's mother.

Someone's caregiver.

Someone's partner.

Someone's everything.

Until one day you catch your reflection and wonder when you stopped recognizing the woman looking back. I don't believe photography changes people. I think it reminds them. It reminds them that they are still there beneath the responsibilities, beneath the expectations, beneath the inner voice that has spent years convincing them they aren't enough.

That's why my sessions are slow.

Why I encourage wandering barefoot if the moment feels right.

Why I laugh when the wind refuses to cooperate.

Why I don't chase perfection.

Life has never been perfect.

It's honest.

It's messy.

It's breathtaking in ways we often miss while we're living it.

The women I photograph don't need to become someone else. They simply deserve the chance to see themselves the way the people who love them already do.

Whole.

Beautiful.

Wild.

Soft.

Enough. Photography began as a hobby. It became a creative outlet. Then it became a career. But more than anything, it became a way of saying, "I see you." And sometimes, I think that's exactly what we all need.

And that's my why.