07/25/2026
Fourteen years. 🥹❤️📸
It’s hard to believe I’ve been a photographer for 14 years this year.
Looking back, I can see God’s hand in this career long before it ever started.
When I was about to graduate college with my Art Education degree, I knew I didn’t want to teach. What I really wanted was to become a nurse, but it felt too late to change directions.
Right before graduation, I went on a mission trip to Belize. I was searching for clarity more than anything. While I was there, I met a photographer from Florida who offered to mentor me. Over the next several months, I’d fly to Destin to photograph weddings alongside him, then come home and spend hours on Skype learning how to edit. He didn’t just teach me photography—he gave me the confidence to begin.
Life had other plans.
I met my husband, started teaching and coaching, and slowly built my photography business on evenings and weekends. Then came motherhood.
After Isaac was born, leaving him every day to do a job I wasn’t passionate about was incredibly hard. My heart still longed for nursing, so I worked in the hospital as a Unit Secretary in the Surgical ICU at BJC and later as an Administrative Coordinator at WashU. I absolutely loved being in that environment. But when I became pregnant with Abe, I realized nursing school would have to wait.
So Patrick and I made a leap of faith.
I opened my photography studio full-time so I could build a career while also being present for my children. That decision became one of the greatest blessings of my life. For years, I’ve had the privilege of documenting families, babies, weddings, and milestones that can never be recreated. I have never taken that responsibility lightly.
Then another unexpected chapter began.
In 2024, after a lot of prayer, Patrick and I remodeled an old building and opened Salt & Honey. It stretched us in every possible way, but it has become more than we ever imagined. The staff, the community, the relationships—it has all been such a gift.
When we opened, I stepped away from photography almost entirely because Salt & Honey needed everything I had.
Now, two years later, my incredible team has given me the freedom to step behind the camera again.
And something feels different.
I don’t feel rushed anymore. I don’t feel like I have anything to prove. I simply want to become exceptional at my craft. I want every client to trust that when they step into my studio, they’ll receive timeless, clean, intentional images they’ll treasure for generations.
It’s funny how life comes full circle.
This fall, all three of my babies will be in school. After all these years, I’m finally going to begin taking nursing classes, too.
For the longest time, I thought I had to choose between the different dreams God placed on my heart.
Now I realize I never had to.
Photography has allowed me to preserve people’s most precious moments. Nursing will allow me to care for people in a different way. Salt & Honey has given me a place to build community.
None of these dreams competed with one another—they’ve simply unfolded in God’s timing.
If you’ve trusted me with your memories over the last 14 years, thank you. Your families have become part of my story, and I’m so grateful I get to keep telling yours.
