My name is Christine…I am the photographer for mothers who know what a true miracle it is to bring life into this world. For the sweet mamas who are ready to get in FRONT of the camera and be in the moment with their loved ones. For the mothers who want to embrace every moment of motherhood and cherish all of the cuddles and chaos. For the nostalgic mothers who still see their toddler’s expressions in their high school senior’s face.
I’ve written this “about” page so many times I’ve lost count…I want to give you more insight into who I am as a person and how it has made me the photographer that I am today. I’ll start with the beginning… I struggled throughout middle school and high school being bullied and picked on. Between the bullies and society it was easy to compare myself to others and decide that I didn’t measure up. It was too easy to decide that I wasn’t beautiful and so I struggled with insecurities about my appearance and personality for years. Because of these feelings I never truly fit in anywhere…but there was one thing, one dream that I wanted more than anything, more than being beautiful or fitting in; I wanted to be a mom.
I have wanted to be a mother my entire life and I remember being so excited when my husband and I started trying to have a baby; but my journey to motherhood would not be the easiest.
Before we had our sweet son, I suffered two miscarriages that changed my life. I knew that 1 in 4 pregnancies ended in miscarriage so when I lost the first one I comforted myself in the fact that according to statistics the odds of my second pregnancy failing was very low. So when I became pregnant again, 6 months after the first, I thought to myself “This is it.”
Except that it wasn’t. And it got worse. After my second miscarriage my appendix ruptured and threatened my ability to become pregnant again on my own. These were the darkest moments in my entire life; I felt like a failure as a woman, like my life was pointless.
This is where my story changes.
This is where I learned to accept God’s plan for my life, to fully let go of the control, to let go of the plans that I had made for myself, to let go of the IDEA of what made me a woman. To fully accept myself as I was; fertile, infertile, mother, or simply just human. I let it go and decided that no matter what happened I would be HAPPY.
Three months after my appendix ruptured I found out I was pregnant with my sweet little boy. And 1 year to the EXACT day I was hospitalized for my ruptured appendix, our son was born.
The loss of my first two babies intensified my need to document every moment of motherhood; every moment of my pregnancy and every second of my little man’s life. I took a million pictures of him; his first smile, his first laugh, his first steps, and every other breath in between.
I was always the one behind the camera not only because I was obsessed with capturing those moments but also because I made excuses.
I hadn’t lost the baby weight, I didn’t like my smile, my hair wasn’t done, I didn’t know what to wear etc. I let the insecurities from my past get the best of me. Until I realized that one day, the only things my son will have left of me are memories and photographs. I decided then that my son deserved to see me in pictures, no matter what I looked like, no matter if I liked myself or not.
We hired a lifestyle photographer who let my husband and I interact naturally and just play with our son. It wasn’t a stressful session; we weren’t overly posed, we just cuddled and tickled and played together. When I received our gallery I was so moved by the genuine connection, the way we all looked so happy, with the love of our family shining on our faces. This is what I had dreamed of when I imagined motherhood…this is how motherhood had been the whole time I just never saw it from BEHIND the camera.
And that’s when I finally saw myself as beautiful.
Was I smiling way too hard? Did I have a double chin because I was full blown laughing? Could I have picked myself apart in every picture? Of course. But I didn’t…because our love shined brighter than my insecurities. That’s when I knew I wanted to pursue photography; I wanted to show other mothers the beauty that is inside them that shows through their love for their children. I want my clients to see the beauty in motherhood, in their love. I want them to embrace every moment of motherhood and cherish all of the cuddles and chaos.
I want to uplift mothers, high school seniors, women overall, and help them to see the unique beauty they have; to show them the light that shines within them.
High school seniors are a branch of family photography in my eyes…because they are still those sweet little babies, the sassy toddlers, the wild ones. And I want them to see, before heading out into the great big world, how stunning and extraordinary they truly are and always have been.
