Hunter Family Photo Shoot--Longmont, CO

Mother’s Day is this Sunday and I couldn’t have had a better reminder of why this day is so important to all the moms out there. My friend Bethany recently gave birth to her fourth son, Beckham. She wanted to get new photos with the newest member of the Hunter clan so we met on Sunday to make it happen! I really enjoyed our time together. I mean how could you not… 3 rambunctious happy boys, a mom and dad who still affectionately love on each other in spite of the chaos of raising kids and a fresh new baby boy that everyone in the family just adores. My little photographer heart was on fire.

Their story is actually quite powerful and a good lesson that none of us have any control and are at the mercy of a much bigger plan. Bethany and Blais had three boys (Jamin, Blais jr and Kohen) all really close together. They are all in elementary/middle school now. Their life was pretty far removed from those early days of babies and toddlers… some might say they were in an easier phase of life where they didn’t have to worry about feeding schedules, naps or diaper bags. They could just pack up and go. But life, as it often does, threw them a curve ball.

Last summer, Bethany found out that she was expecting. It came as a big surprise to everyone and even though it wasn’t a part of the plan, it was still very exciting! She lived through everyone asking her, “don’t you hope it’s a girl this time?” And, “Woah, another baby?” And all of those other strange and judgemental questions we ask pregnant women (that’s a whole blog post on its own!) She found out pretty early on that it was in fact another boy. I asked the brothers if they wanted a sister and they all emphatically agreed, “No! We were excited we were getting a brother because we can teach him hockey!” Ha! Boys are fun.

Bethany and Blais have such a patient, kind and relaxed disposition. Life has thrown a lot at them. In fact, Beckham was born really early at 31 weeks. He had to stay in the NICU for a few weeks and Bethany and Blais had to make the trip down to Denver daily to see him. You can imagine the strength it took to get through those emotional and exhausting first weeks of their baby’s life. But now look… he’s so healthy and plump and perfect in every way! This little bonus baby was so lucky to have been born into this loving home.

Mother’s Day is a perfect reminder that what moms go through to bring little ones into this world is nothing short of amazing. Then comes the hard part. The actual raising of children is by far the greatest challenge I personally have endured and I think most parents would agree. It is the days, weeks, months and years following the birth of your child that are the hardest. We need a special reminder that we are loved by all of these little humans that depend on us each day. My hope is that these five boys do something extra special for their mama this year because she is so deserving.

Wishing all of the moms out there a most wonderful Mother’s Day! Cheers friends!

Behind the Scenes Roadside Shoot- Mead, Colorado

Have you ever seen a 'Behind the Scenes' image? Of course you have! Well I've been thinking lately about how a lot of what I do behind the lens and the images I produce can look drastically different than the environment I took them in.  It wasn't always like this... I have learned a lot over the 8 years I've been studying photography. I've taken online courses from industry leaders and pushed myself to learn how to work magic in any situation I find myself in. As a photographer, I think people expect my images to be amazing no matter what... it is our job right??  The reality is that most of the time, the surrounding conditions are less than ideal and it takes a lot of technical knowledge to get an image to look the way you want straight out of camera. But that's the fun part- read on to get a glimpse into my 'Behind the Scenes' roadside shoot... in a field of weeds!

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We live about 20 minutes North of the town we both grew up in. It is very rural out here so we have to go into town for pretty much everything. After living here for about 6 years now, I have come to know the back roads pretty well. I prefer them over the main ones. I like to shake things up a lot and my daily routines lie somewhere between “completely erratic” and “creature of habit”. So it’s not unusual for me to drive one way into town and then a completely different way home.

The most common route for me to go though, passes through farmland before cutting through small neighborhoods to get to my house. For several days in a row, I was noticing that the fields were all turning green. The first signs of spring were popping up everywhere and one day, on this particular route, I spotted a huge patch of purple just off the side of the road. I knew what it was immediately… well sort of. I know they are weeds, and they have a distinct smell. I don’t know the name though so if you do, please tell me!

Anyway… these weeds are everywhere each spring and for me, they carry the scent of summer on its way. I smell them and instantly think about the warm summer evenings and long walks to come. And as I got closer, this patch was so large and dense with these bright purple flowers, I couldn’t stop staring at it. It was a little beacon of hope that yes, in spite of the roller coaster weather we’ve been having, all the other blooms of spring will be here any day!

This little spot of beauty is just off the side of the road. It is surrounded by dirt that is not yet inhabited by crops or other weeds so it honestly isn’t a very pretty area. There are neighborhoods on both sides of the road and they add nothing to the aesthetic appeal. But I knew that if I worked the angles, I could come up with a scene that made it seem so much more appealing. Well at least I wanted to try. I decided to make a project out of it and see if I could transform the ordinary surroundings into a ‘Narnia’ like setting.

I passed by that huge plot of purple several days in a row and it kept calling to me. I really wanted to stop.  I knew I had to bring the girls here! And my camera. But I kept putting it off. Getting too busy, making all the excuse of why tomorrow would be better. I almost missed my opportunity completely.

The stars aligned just right last Thursday afternoon and I just happen to have my camera and both girls in the car with me. We were headed home from dropping our dog Huckleberry, off at grandma’s and were leaving for Nebraska in less than 2 hours. If I wanted to pull this off, I had to just do it. If I waited until we got back, the chances of the field being dried up were pretty high. The little flowers don’t live long and to be honest, this spot was only 1 or 2 days away from turning crispy. On top of that, I was up against some tough obstacles, It was about 12:30 in the afternoon with very harsh sunlight overhead. I would’ve liked to do a sunset shoot but alas, the time was now or maybe not ever. Which isn’t like the end of the world or anything but I wanted to pull off this challenge I had given myself gosh darn it!

We pulled over and I got the girls out. I let Lydia run wild as I got my camera settings dialed in. I set Emmy down towards the edge of the field and walked away about 5 yards to give some distance. It was so fun figuring out which angle worked the best. I found that if I got down on my belly, I could make the flowers look larger and more whimsical looking. If I stood up, the flowers faded and the brown dirt took over the entire image. I played around for a good 20 minutes. I’m sure anyone passing by got some amusement out of it. The girls enjoyed the unstructured play, and for the most part, did their own thing. I made sure to take some shots of the area and how it looks normally so that I could show the comparison.

Narnia

Reality

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Narnia

Reality

This part of photography is my favorite. I really love a good challenge and the technical aspects of photography are infinite. Trying new things always teaches us valuable lessons and this, like any art form, is not one to be perfected. It is a lifelong commitment and journey to grow, learn and enjoy getting better. Perfection and mastery are not motivators but rather inhibitors. If you constantly feel the need to be the best, you’ll sacrifice the joy that comes with progress. It’s all about falling in love with the process of making an image… and then showing those images to the world.

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Narnia

Reality

Feedback is wonderful and I would love to hear yours! What sort of ordinary moments have you made extraordinary?

Why I Chose Photography

When I was a little girl, I would spend hours looking through family photographs. We had this old bureau that was stuffed full of loose pictures, randomly shoved together and in no particular order. I loved to rummage through them and ask my mother and grandmother about all of the people in the pictures. Mostly family, some friends. I would dig and dig and dig through those pictures just imagining the moments that were so wonderfully frozen in time. It was a way to connect with the past; a past that was full of good times, hard times and otherwise forgotten times. And thinking back on it now, I understand why I chose photography as a way to connect with people. It informs my “Why”... The “Why do I do this everyday in spite of feeling like I am constantly riding a bucking horse that wants to kick my teeth in but I keep climbing on its back anyway?” That may be an extreme exaggeration but in all honesty, the role I lovingly refer to as “Momprenuer”, is tough.

It makes sense though. I never choose the easy path and I probably never will. My life has been full of challenges and they have shaped me in countless ways. When I was 5 my parents separated. I lived with my mom because my dad was a long haul trucker and spent several days at a time on the road. I saw him every other weekend for a while but then came a time when I no longer saw him regularly and weeks without visits turned into years. We had a few sporadic phone calls here and there but lost touch entirely when I was about 8. When I was 20, I received a phone call that he had passed away. The doctor that I spoke to told me that they would be mailing me his possessions. The first thought I had was, I hope there is a recent photograph so that I can see what he looked like nearly 15 years later. There wasn’t.

The only photographs I had of him were in the bureau and they were all from a lifetime ago. We had several pictures of our happy little family portraits at ‘Olan Mills’, snapshots of fishing trips together, Christmases, Easters, etc… In fact, if I handed you a stack of these pictures, you’d be hard pressed to find the tough times that would follow these very ordinary, very happy family moments. Those photographs are my living proof that once upon a time my mom and dad loved each other enough to bring me and my little sister into the world.

My sister Lauren and I grew close in those years following our parents divorce and spent lots of time with our grandparents while our mother tried to start over. She decided to open her own house painting business and I got to see first hand how hard being a small business owner could be. I was too young to fully understand but I knew that it took her a lot of time, energy, and sacrifice. She was strong though and I admired her in a lot of ways for doing so much on her own while trying to raise two little girls.

My mom eventually remarried and we collected stacks of pictures from the next chapter of our life. Not long after she married my step dad, my mom gave birth to my third sister Erika and then a couple years after that, my fourth sister, Valerya. We were now a family of 6. We have pictures of birthday parties, family trips, backyard swinging, camping, barbecues… all the fun family times that most all of us can relate to. And again, our family photographs serve as proof that these moments won’t be forgotten and are worth looking back on.

On long hot summer days or boring snowy ones, I’d go back to that bureau and drag out all of those photographs. I’d piece together my childhood and try to remember all of those good times. When I visited my grandma (which was often), I’d open her scrapbooks for fun. She kept more organized photos at her house and made dozens of albums highlighting specific time periods of her life. She made one of her high school years and all of the dances she attended. She’d tell stories of dancing with boys and smoking cigarettes with her friends.

She had scrapbooks from when my grandfather went off to basic training during the Korean war, their life (complete with letters) as newlyweds spent worlds apart in the first few years, my grandfather’s graduation from Texas Tech and his first jobs at various ranches. In these scrapbooks I could travel back in time with them and imagine how life must’ve felt. My grandparents were really good at taking pictures and even better at telling the stories. Gran Deanie had a mind like a steel trap and could recount everything about the day or people in each picture. My grandfather, Happy Hank, was a natural storyteller and he added beautiful details to go along with the pictures.

My favorite albums were the ones of my mom and her brothers as children. They were raised on a 150,000 acre cattle ranch in southern Colorado. I was fascinated (and still am today) by their life on that ranch. My mom rode her horse, Honey Red, everyday and helped my grandpa with rounding up cattle. My uncle tells me that she was a very talented rider and always the fastest, riding out ahead of the group to lead them in the right direction. I could listen to my mom and uncle tell stories of the trouble they got into on that ranch for hours. The photographs that go with those stories are some of my most treasured.

My grandparents moved into a nursing home a few years back and my uncles entrusted me with the family albums. I get them out from time to time and relive the stories that have been handed down to me. My grandma left us a living legacy her entire life. We even have photos from when her mother was young dating back to the early 1900’s. The 65 years her and my grandfather were married gave way to thousands of photo worthy moments. She knew the value in capturing those moments so that the younger generations could look back and connect to their family history.

When I was 26 my mother passed away somewhat unexpectedly. It sent us reeling and was one of the darkest times of my life. Within hours after she passed, I went straight to the bureau. It still had stacks of pictures strewn about. I started organizing them into time periods and trying to create a timeline of her life. It was the only thing that made sense to me at the time. I had this strong urge to show her in such a way that it gave meaning to her life. Every photograph became a reference to specific parts of her. The mother, the daughter, the grandmother, the independent thinker, the often rebellious, untamable and wild wonder that was my mom. She was gone physically from the world but in those photographs I could connect to all of those pieces of her. And I don’t think it was by chance that I did that. I think instinct lead me to do it. I have always been drawn to those photographs.

At this point in time, Adam I had been working on building a photography business and my mom was really proud of us for pursuing this dream. We had a hobby level DSLR camera and started shooting families, weddings and anything that people wanted really. We were both art majors in college and this was a way we could use our creative talents while earning an income. The starving artist lifestyle was not going to cut it so we took to a medium that was more accessible. But all of those business dreams came crashing down when my mom died. There just wasn’t time anymore to think about it. We were thrown into the midst of taking care of my teenage sisters and helping our family to survive this tragic loss. We would still take clients here and there based on word of mouth...friends of friends and such. But the energy to take it full time was just not there. It was a hard time to push through.

Eventually I came back to myself, my own desires and dreams and I decided to wake up that sleeping need to create. I have slowly been building my dreams of being a successful creative entrepreneur. So when I started to really dig deep and try to pin down my “Why”, all of these moments came flooding in. Photography is special. My entire life has been filled with reasons why photography is especially important to me. The pictures that remain are the only physical representation I have of the long list of incredibly important people I have lost.

I take pictures in hopes that the families I serve can look back to the important moments in their life and have that visual proof. And when loved ones are no longer physically here, they have the photos to help them remember a happier time. I believe in preserving family history and that every piece of it, however happy, difficult or seemingly ordinary, has meaning. I would argue that you’ll never have too many pictures of your family… and trust me, children love to look at pictures of their family too! They’ll probably thank you later on for documenting their life so well.

So that’s it. Thank you for staying with me this long so that I could share my heart for why I love photography. Now go take more pictures… oh and print them too! Or go open an old album and have your children crawl up into your lap to look at all of the wonderful moments you’ve shared together. If your children are grown, take some time to reflect on those memories and let the photographs take you back in time. And if you don’t have children, well look at your own childhood! That’s the most fun! Everyone loves to see old photos from their “awkward” phase, am I right?

Love,

Jenn

PS~

I know you might be asking yourself, so where’s the bureau now? I still have it! And I filled it with albums of my life with Adam and our two little girls, Lydia & Emmersyn. I have all of those old photographs from my childhood organized in a box and I made a small collage with some of the more special ones of my mom and sisters. I just got the box out a few weeks back when I wrote Our Love Story, Part 1: Middle School. Lydia had a lot of fun digging through it with me and it was equally fun for me to share a piece of my past with her.