11/26/2025
Warning ⚠️ This is a long read ➡️
I picked up a camera for the first time at sixteen, right after my father was murdered. I came to school the very next day because home felt too loud, too quiet, too heavy… all at once. I just needed to sit in the one place that had ever made sense to me: the art room.
All day, I waited for that class. When the bell finally rang, I pulled a photo of my dad out of my bag and told Mrs. Hornsby, “I’m going to draw my dad today.”
She already knew what had happened, and she looked at me with the most peaceful eyes and said, “Honey… I think it might be too early for that.”
“No,” I told her. “This is exactly what I need.”
Art had always been my way of breathing when life tried to take the air out of my chest. That day was no different.
But as I traced the wrinkles in my father’s face with my eyes so I could recreate them on paper… the tears started rising faster than my pencil could move. And then they broke. Not little tears either. I mean full, hysterical sobbing in the middle of the 10th-grade art room.
I heard her whisper, almost to herself, “I knew it was too soon,” as she walked me into the hallway.
She held me for a moment, then told me to wait.
I could tell she was thinking.
Plotting something.
A minute later she walked back out with a Canon camera in her hand.
“Have you ever used one of these?” she asked.
I shook my head.
She showed me how to switch it to manual and said I could keep it for a week as long as I promised to bring it back. Then she said something I’ll never forget:
“As artists, sometimes we get stuck. Sometimes the medium we usually use can’t hold the weight of what we’re feeling. Maybe it’s time to learn a new one.”
So I did.
And that camera, that exact camera, became the one bright thing in the darkest year of my young life.
I took pictures of everything. My neighbors. Old barns. Cows in Gum Springs. I started noticing beauty in places I had driven past a hundred times without ever really seeing.
Before long, I was photographing seniors at school. I joined yearbook. I walked myself right down to the Clark County Courthouse, registered a DBA, and launched my first business: Snaptastic Photography.
Since then, I’ve had many names, many seasons.
I’ve worked with brands like McDonald’s.
Had one of my images land in Forbes.
Shut my business down. Rebuilt it.
Given people incredible experiences and made some mistakes along the way.
Cried over this work.
Laughed because of this work.
And stayed committed to becoming better, always.
But through every chapter, every comeback, every rebrand… I’ve made that 16 year old girl, the one crying in the hallway at Arkadelphia High, so unbelievably proud.
And I like to believe I’ve made my dad proud too.
Honestly, that’s enough for me.
To those who’ve watched every version of me, to those who met me somewhere in the middle, and to those who are discovering me right now, I’m grateful.
Sutter House Studio is more than a business to me.
It’s where I honor the girl who survived, the woman I’m becoming, and every story I have the privilege of photographing along the way.
Here’s to new chapters.
To girl power.
And to art that heals because it always has, and it always will.
