Thanks for popping over here to learn a bit about me, my life and the reasons I take photographs. It’s really important to me that you know how much heart I put into creating the very best work that I can. I know how much it counts. <3
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In my house I print everything. I have stacks of prints that have yet to make it into albums but to me, the organization isn't what's important, it's having the prints to spread out on the floor and talk about with my two children. We've been doing that since they were tiny and the stacks just grow and we share more about what they remind us of and laugh together and sometimes cry a little too.
My son Dorian is 15 and my daughter Hazel is 17 and when they were 3 & 5 their father, my husband Igor, died of suicide. I hesitate to share this with you all because it's kind of heavy but I want you to know where my value in photographs comes from. My prints, those ones that we spread out on the floor, are the stories that they have left and what keeps my memory fresh. We get to see his happy grin, his dance folly and the hugs he gave his loved ones. There are no possessions I treasure more than those images and there is no gift greater for Hazel and Dorian.
As we print new photographs of our lives, of each of us, including me, our story unfolds before us. We can map our journey as a family now of three. We can see where the images that include him stop and where our smaller team began and we have hand held evidence of our joys and our adventures reminding us always of the meaning and humor, regardless of loss, in life.
Wedding days are such precious crowns of tenderness and hope. They bring people together that might otherwise never see one another. They can build bridges and mend broken hearts. I want the experience for you, of spreading out your images, picking each up and being reminded of that moment's joy and the people you shared it with over and over again.
I photograph weddings because when memories fade, as they eventually do, what you have left are the photographs. Physical, celebratory and lasting evidence of what was a magnificent coming together, to never ever be forgotten. Wedding days are for laughter and promises and gathering and they are an example of all things good in the world. If that's not worth documenting with full heart I don't know what is.
Your coupledom (throupleship etc.) is unique, unlike any other, and I’d love the opportunity to chat and learn about you, how you arrived at this juncture & your hopes for your big day :)
-Gretchen
“... In your photos, we see an openness and humility in front of ever-changing surroundings, and an understanding that the day being photographed is one among many. Rather than strive for an artificial sense of importance or manufactured emotion, you search for the enduring, minute details that compose the feeling of a given time and place, capturing fleeting convergences of personality and light.
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Critical
CAUSES
