Shedding Skins & Chasing Light: The Year of the Snake & a New Vision for Photography
Once upon a sunbeam, in the rolling hills of Roanoke, a photographer shed one skin and stepped into another. Last year was a year of birth—of stories, of memories, of my very own tiny moonbeam of a daughter. It was a year of movement, of shifting shadows, of packing up life and unrolling it like an old map across the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was a year of witnessing love bloom in front of my lens, of chasing golden hour like a moth drunk on candlelight, of capturing the magic of you—your weddings, the newborn sighs, your soft, sleepy glances at a partner who feels like home.
And now, as the Year of the Snake coils its way into our lives, I find myself drawn to transformation, to the art of shedding and becoming. Like the snake, I want to move closer to the earth—outdoors, where the sun weaves lace through tree branches and the wind whispers secrets to the grass. I want to capture the raw, pulsing, untamed beauty of birth work, where doulas dance between worlds, guiding life into the air like fireflies shaking off the dark. I want to press my camera against the soft heartbeat of family homes, where morning light spills over messy kitchens and laughter lingers in the walls like the scent of old books.
This year, I crave the editorial—the bold, the storytelling, the images that crackle with the energy of a name everyone should know, even if it’s only whispered by the wind. The kind of portraits where laughter sounds like a standing ovation and a single gaze could make the moon itself ask for an autograph. The bold, the storytelling, the images that feel like they’ve been plucked from the pages of a and set gently into reality.
So here’s to the new year. To skin-shedding and light-chasing. To wilder, truer photographs. And, as always, to never walking past a good dog without saying hello.
If you’re a doula, a wild-hearted family, an expectant mother, or someone who wants to step into the storybook of their own life—let’s make magic together.