As a Portland, Oregon-based photographer, I have been blessed with clients and projects from sea-to-shining-sea!

Of course, there’s a story…

I was living and working in St. Louis in the mid-90’s.  For a semester, I signed up for a basic photography class at the community college where I would learn from professionals –– professionals who actually earned a living as photographers.  I flipped the switch from Automatic to Manual, and never looked back.  Who would have thought portrait photography was lurking beneath my surface?

Good friends accepted my camera as a part of every invitation to get together, allowing me to create childrens’ and family portraits and professional headshots.  Those friends taught me to photograph people; I was just the one holding the camera.  Now I was hooked on faces, stories, and portrait photography.

Traveling, Learning, Observing

For decades, I have worked as a nurse anesthetist finding rewards, challenges and inspiration in patients, colleagues and the cities where I lived: Jackson, MS; New York City; St. Louis; and now Portland, Oregon. Add to those the people I met while volunteering internationally: quiet, curious sitters who contributed broadly to my experience as a portrait photographer. There was no planning, it was simply: come-as-you-are, come with your babies or come with your parents.

Traveling internationally, for fun or for humanitarian relief missions, my photographs became my travel diaries –– photo essays that told the stories to those who asked about my “vacations”.  And I am forever able to revisit what transpired between my eyes (my heart) and the landscape, the history, the people involved.  That which they cherish, fear, tolerate, express are all observable whether one is walking along the Seine in the shadow of Notre Dame’s gargoyles, or in remote areas of Ethiopia –– inside a cubicle re-purposed as an operating room.

The Beauty of a Story

Telling stories with my camera drives me now. Families or individuals come to me or invite me into their space to record a milestone, a new baby, or simply to capture where they are in this moment.

Having done this for decades, making portraits now in Portland, OR, I know that no one ever regrets having too much visual evidence of joy known and shared.