44 Frames

What if getting older isn't about all the time that has passed, but more about how much life we've been given?

This week, I turned 44, and it got me thinking about the people I love, those I have lost, the things I’ve learned, and all the ways we celebrate being alive. As human beings, I think we are pretty darn good at celebrating the big milestones- those big calendar items like weddings, new babies, graduations, birthdays, and the new job. And as a photographer, this is typically when I get a call.

But the reality is, most of life happens somewhere in between those milestones. So, how do we celebrate the things that don't necessarily come with a cake and ceremony? How do we honor all the little unexpected joys that make up a life well lived?

-Starting over.

-Making time to hang out with that one friend you haven't seen in years, but you can both pick up like no time ever passed.

-A second chance.

-Saying yes to something new.

-Watching your child turn into an incredible adult. (That definitely didn't happen in our house last week without shedding a few tears!)

-Finding your confidence again.

-Having the courage to walk away.

-A completely ordinary Tuesday that, for some reason, you wish you could go back to over and over again.

Maybe in the end, these are the moments that matter most.

The ones that slip quietly into our days.

The little things that, when you look back, turn out to have been the big things all along.

And that's something worth celebrating every.single.day.

So I want to spend the next year searching out the joy, the resilience, the connection, the ordinary moments that turned out to be extraordinary, and I want to meet the people who remind us that life, in all of its messy and beautiful forms, is worth celebrating. Here. Now. Especially now.

Enter project 44 FRAMES.

A black-and-white gallery exhibition of 44 stories from people of all ages and all lived experiences.

44 reasons to celebrate being alive.

Maybe you have a story.

Maybe someone you love does.

And I’m going looking for them. Proof that a life is made beautiful by the moments we choose to notice. Not perfect or polished, but real.

I have a feeling those moments are going to remind me (and maybe all of us) of something we already know deep down…

There is still so much good to see here.

So what are you celebrating? And are you in?

+A huge shout-out and sincere thank you to the incredible @jonnycreative who took this portrait of me and let me fall apart in his studio because of the beautiful safe space he held for me as a witness to my story. I am eternally grateful you are a part of my journey!

What I learned from the Titanic

The Titanic Exhibit verified everything I already knew.

While I was on vacation, we went to a Titanic Exhibit. It wasn’t the heart wrenching letters or the hand-sewn baby shoes, but the room filled with black and white photography that got me in the end. Tears just started flowing. It was the room I spent the most time in by far.

The room was filled with truly incredible black and white imagery from the days leading up to her first and last voyages. Without Father Browne’s film camera, there would have been no photos of the Titanic. The negatives of this series of images weren’t found until after I was born in the 80’s, and they barely survived the conditions of storage as it was. To see them hanging in a room together, transporting you to another time and place, was breathtaking.

Father Francis Browne was a teacher, and he was asked not to lecture on his experience on the Titanic afterwards. Although he had been censored, Browne still documented with beautiful storytelling in the quiet and in his own way.

He made albums of his work and wrote anecdotal narratives to document his experience. The gallery walls were filled with dates, times, places, and the people, some of which experienced being photographed for the very last time.

Browne was an incredible documentary photographer, who walked quietly on the decks taking pictures of the everyday-fleeting moments most would have considered mundane, but over a century later, I KNEW these people because of Browne. Mailmen bringing on bags of correspondence, a robust gymnasium with the best equipment, people trying on life vests, a Sunday stroll on deck- all captured stunningly from a fly on the wall witnessing beautiful excitement and novelty.

And all I could think was...

Do you know how many times I’ve heard excuses from incredible people, doing incredible things who just want to hide from my camera?

“Maybe when I lose the weight. What am I going to do with pictures of myself anyways? There’s nothing special about my story.”

Oh my love, you’ve LIVED.

You were born worthy of being seen, heard, and understood.

Every.single.moment is worth documenting, because you never know when it will be your last

And I know with certainty that when everything else is gone, what we'll long for won't be what's stored in the cloud. It will be the photographs we can hold in our hands as the quiet proof that we were here, that we loved, and that our lives mattered.