Why I Photograph Relationships, Not Just Occasions

Most photography is organized around events. Weddings. Graduations. Newborns. Anniversaries. The occasion is the reason for the camera, and once the occasion passes, so does the opportunity.

While I have photographed all of these and created beautiful, cherished images for these events, at some point I realized the true beauty of these images was not necessarily documenting the event, but documenting the interaction of those being photographed.

So I changed my approach to build my work around a different idea: that relationships themselves, independent of any occasion, are worth documenting. Not just the wedding, but the marriage twenty years in. Not only the graduation, but the mother and daughter who talk every day since she went off to college. Not just the milestone birthday, but the friendship that's been there to celebrate most of them.

And not only the relationships between people. But also the relationship each of us has with ourselves, which is often the one we tend to the least.

This is why my portrait sessions don't require a reason. Just relationships worth documenting exactly as they are right now.

I think about photography less as a service for special occasions and more as a way of creating a lasting artifact of identity and connection. Something that says, this is who I was, this is who I loved, this is how I saw myself, independent of whatever else was happening on the calendar that year.

If that's the kind of photograph you've been looking for - one that doesn't need an occasion to justify it - that's exactly what I do.