Welcome to the New Site!
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes….
If you didn’t experience some sort of major change in your life over the last 24 months, were you even living on planet Earth? Change is unavoidable even in the best of times. Throw in a global pandemic and massive shift in the way we value workers and generally treat our fellow citizens and, yeah …. it’s a doozy of a time to be alive.
Like most people, my world shifted entirely in March of 2020. I was about six months pregnant at the time and preparing myself for a 12-week maternity leave over the summer. I’d been working as a professional photographer for eight years and was excited for the shoots I had scheduled late into the year. Food photography projects as a monthly contributor to a stock photography company I love, personal branding sessions for local businesses and artists, website revamps for some Bay Area restaurants- all the things I dearly loved to shoot were dabbled throughout my spring and late fall calendar. The summer and early fall would be busy enough settling into life with a newborn and getting the oldest ready to start kindergarten. I had it all mapped out and it was shaping up to be a lovely year.
And then … well, you know what happened next. It started innocently enough. A few people here and there wearing masks at the grocery store or in Target. Not unusual at all during winter in San Francisco, actually. Then there were the rumblings and murmurings. Some new flu in Asia. It might be serious. It might be nothing. Hand sanitizing stations started popping up everywhere, along with people in surgical gloves who didn’t seem to understand how gloves even work. Large events started canceling and businesses suggested staying home. The AmEx food event for 150 people that I was scheduled to shoot was suddenly canceled. Within days, the remaining shoots I had scheduled for March were canceled. By the end of the week, and with the announcement of the San Francisco Bay Area being the first metropolitan area in the country to go into lockdown, all my shoots until the end of the year were canceled. I was now on an early and indefinite maternity leave.
To be totally honest, I welcomed it at first. I’ve been working since I was 15 and supporting myself since I was 18. It was kind of nice to have a completely legitimate excuse NOT to work. I was fortunate enough to be in a position, thanks to savings and a husband who’s business continued without interruption, to take time to reconsider what I actually wanted to do in life. I’d been operating as a solopreneur for over eight years at that point and as much as I still loved photography (a love which has only grown since I’ve slowed down and returned to film during COVID), I wasn’t so sure I loved shooting other people. If I’m being real with myself, I was feeling very uninspired and mechanical in my work.
So I stopped shooting.
I shot a few rolls of my oldest during the early days of the pandemic. We had fun, just the two of us, cooped up in our 800-sq foot apartment, venturing out to Golden Gate Park once a week to go on a photo adventure. And then I didn’t shoot anything for months. And months. And months. There’s a gap in my personal files from July 2020 to December 2020. Half a year, documented solely on my iPhone because when I reached for the big girl camera, my soul just groaned. I was burnt out and needed a break.
I was also studying energetics via Reiki at that time, something I’ll write more about soon in a Reiki-centered post. For now, suffice it to say, through my Reiki treatments and meditation practice, it became clear to me that what the pandemic brought was an opportunity to reset. To rest. To breathe. To pursue self-study without the guilt of work taking a back seat or not having enough time for all the things I loved. The pandemic stole a lot from many of us, but it also gave us the gift of time. While I did not write the Next Great American Novel or even the next great American Instagram post during that time, I did spend it doing something I love dearly - studying all the things I was curious about. I found myself digging deeper into Human Design, even doing a mentorship to be a qualified reader. I cracked open my old French books and had some silly conversations with myself. I started watercolor painting and exploring a new medium for visual storytelling. I found encaustic art and it has since become my favorite mode of creative expression. And before I knew it, I found myself reaching for my camera again while thoughts of double exposures on film swirled in my head. I wanted to shoot again. And I wanted to create with others again.
So here we are, with a new website, an updated portfolio of delicious and decadent images, and a newsletter in the works, too. I’m really happy you’re here reading this. Whether you’ve been following along with me since I started blogging as a law student in 2010 or you are brand new here today, I hope we have the chance to connect more deeply and learn from each other as we continue along this wild journey. And if you’re a food brand, food blog, or anything in the food space, I hope I get the chance to make your food look as good as it tastes. xo
