Rochester PREMIER Senior Photographer | Senior photography is my PASSION

It has been awhile since I have done a personal blog post. I feel so passionate about why I shoot high school seniors I just wanted to take the time to share with you all.

I have had time to think and can now blog from my heart. I had to take a step back and evaluate myself, my business, my clients, and my family. Last week I was consumed with the photography industry’s negativity personally and witness some dear friends going through the after math of others destruction as well. I see it all the time and I normally keep my opinion to myself because i’m trying to run a business that supports my family and don’t have the time or energy to get involved. Well last week I couldn’t just turn my cheek. It’s actually so petty that’s it’s not even worth my time to discuss what happened, but it got me thinking about WHY I do photography. I have been in photography since 2011. Ironically my first 4 shoots were senior sessions! I had a blast, and it brought something out of me that I didn’t know was existed. It made me feel alive. In the beginning I shot everything under the sun. Seniors, families, weddings, newborns. I fell hard for the seniors. It’s my nature to be 100% at everything I do. Doing everything started to take a real toll on myself and my family. I decided last year to only focus on seniors and weddings. I still offer mini session in the spring and fall for family clients since they hold a very dear spot in my heart as well. This allowed me to focus more time & energy on my PASSION seniors and weddings. Both of these were a  milestones in my very own life. So it’s no wonder they became my passion. Senior photography is what lights me up. I didn’t just wake up one day and decide i’m going to specialize in high school seniors.  It kind of just happened then I started building my business and my brand around that. Finding my specialty for me has been very therapeutic kind of like my 20’s. While I was finding my specialty I was also learning who I was a young adult.  A lot of time we can get so wrapped up in our brands, what lens we have, what camera we use, our hot spot locations, how many outfit changes we offer, hair and makeup but at the end of the day we should be asking ourselves Why do we do what we do? No matter what it is. Of course we have to earn a living so that is obvious. I just loved shooting and as I looked up 4 years later I found that I was molding a brand for myself. I realized I had created this amazing senior experience for my high school senior clients. I want them to feel beautiful. I want them to be treated like a model for the day. I want them to let go of all their insecurities and own their true beauty. Our young girls are subjected to so much at such a young ago by the time they are young adults their perception of beauty is morphed, it’s unrealistic and unattainable for the everyday woman. This is so near and dear to my heart because I was once a young girl and I to struggled with feeling beautiful enough. I hated my smile, I was told I had a big forehead from my peers, I never felt thin enough. Now being older and wiser I have learned to embrace my BEAUTY! I have a young 8 year old girl and I will be damned if she grows up not feeling loved or beautiful. Not a single day goes by that I don’t tell her I love her and I make sure to give her some kind of compliment. I know for most of you, you might not get it but she doesn’t have long straight hair, blue eyes. We will all have our struggles but her’s will be different, hers will be what some take for granted. The media starts painting that picture for her at such a young age what beauty is and we start to believe it, So it my job to make sure I remind her daily that she is beautiful.

At the end of the day if I can make 1 girl feel beautiful, if I can give 1 girl the confidence that she to can rule the world, if I can make 1 girls stand a few inches taller then I have done MY job! That is honestly why I shoots school senior, Oh and of course to take pretty pictures!