Intimacy . Elise + James

*Precursor to the post, this is a heart opened, and a mind under struggle and not intended to hurt anyone. Just know ones judgement on another can affect them. So please move forward if you are okay with art, love, intimacy, vulnerability, and skin. If not, I won’t be offended.*

It’s so often that art is misunderstood, that love is taken for granted, that emotions run uncontrolled, and that fear dictates how we live our lives. The last several years it has been hard for me to open up publicly about how I view my work and how I want to impact my clients; how I want to meet them where they are and how I want to tell the depths of their stories through my work. I watch as other photographers, other creatives, work freely with their art. As I dug into what I was drawn to - the stories, the emotions, the visuals - it carried me into the night, wondering how to draw emotional connections like others. I stumbled upon photographers like, Ben Sasso, Katch Silva, Phili Chester, Rafal Bojar, and Don & Helen. A small list of people who inspire me every day. What I found was that they didn’t dictate what was leading their art. They allowed their clients to push the stories they told, not the other way around! They may have pushed their art, but they did it at the vulnerability of their clients stories.

So as I leap into this blog I do it with fear, with doubt, with questioning, and the fear of judgment of those with different views screaming in my mind. This internal battle of mine has brought me through some serious lows but I hope that one day this struggle will also allow me some breath-taking highs in this passion I call a job! So below is a couple, Elise and James who are both very unique in their own way, magical together. The way that James tenderly loves the insecurities of Elise, and the way that Elise allows James to be his own man was wild to see. Both of them with their own difficult past, coming together with what they thought would be reservations and rather allowed it to be a joining together in love, vulnerability, intimacy, purity, and openness have made something beautiful. Theirs is a love that allows those around them to live in the norm, whether that be a little different than society wants you to be. You feel welcome. You feel as though you have a space, a world, and friends that are open to you and your struggles, your vulnerabilities, your loves. As I write this sitting in yet another coffee shop, I tremble to hit the publish button. I have a slight shake in my hands with fear of those who won’t understand what I was able to capture through these images. I hope that on some level, from this moment on, I will feel as though I get to be myself through the images I get to capture for others and of others being completely them, completely true, completely vulnerable, completely in love. As you go through these images you may not understand what these mean to this couple. Maybe you will. I want to ask you to view these as though you’re in the arms of the person you feel love, purity, intimacy, and vulnerability with. Then and only then may you start to see what these images will mean and do mean for Elise and James.