Ashley | Mountain Top Yoga Portraits | Shenandoah National Park

“Step outside, time to step outside

House on fire, leave it all behind you
Living life, feeding appetites
Stayed through every hard stop, every go
Being bland
Breathing half the time

House on fire, leave it all behind you
Dark as night, let the lightning guide you

Step outside, time to step outside.”

— José González

If you're in Virginia, you know of the insane weather we've been having. Beautiful in the 60's during the week, freezing (literally) on the weekend. When Ashley & I first scheduled her photo shoot, it was for a Saturday that was going to be 35 degrees out. We decided to postpone - the next date we picked, as we got closer, we realized it was going to be reaching 75. It was absolutely perfect. I was awake at 4:30am out of excitement. The hike to Mary's Rock was more strenuous than we remembered from the last time, but when we got to the top, we had the whole mountain to ourselves. We took a breather, and both had to figure out together how to "pose" for a yoga shoot. By the time we were finishing up, we saw our first hikers, and as we made our way down it was group after group making their way up. We had a whole hour to ourselves in the Shenandoah National Park, with an incredible view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was such a beautiful & fun experience, and I'm so thrilled to share these with you.


Ashley has just finished her training to become a certified yoga teacher! She will be starting an Instagram account where she will be posting pictures & videos of her new journey!

Please give her a follow, I know you'll love her as much as I do. I got to take an hour and a half class taught by her and it was so perfect. She's worked so hard to get here, but it seems so natural.

@letthelightinyoga

Hannah | Snowy Lake Arrowhead Portraits

“Don’t leave love there’s a storm above. Don’t leave love.”

Hannah! I had never met Hannah before this portrait session, but we were friends on Facebook because of mutual friends, and I had asked her a couple months back if she would like to do a photo shoot together. It took a couple months of figuring schedules, and finally when we set a date, it snowed. So we postponed by one more day, and here we were. It was SO windy. We could only stay out for 30 minutes, our hands were so frozen. She was a serious champ, dealing with this freezing weather and my cold stuttering. I'm so happy that our schedules didn't work out until recently, because I've only really discovered this location for photography in the last couple weeks, and it was perfect for this shoot.

After only taking pictures for 30 minutes, we needed to warm up so we went out for chai (because this local coffee shop seriously has the best chai in the whole world) and talked for 2 hours until the shop closed. I wish I could do that after every photo shoot and get to know my clients this way.

Ever since I was young I would hear a song that would put an image in my head, and that's when I would start going out to take self portraits. Now, whenever I have a photo shoot, I will listen to certain songs that I think will fit the vibe, either on the way there or while photographing, and then again while I'm editing.

I've decided to start including these songs with my blog posts, so if you'd like to listen along you definitely should.
 

Jordan || Boudoir Portraits Loudoun County Virginia

When I started dancing Jordan was my Clara in the Nutcracker and I was her party girl. We grew up the next few years dancing side by side as completely different people, but always really good friends. I seem to remember some times when she'd bring a film camera into dance class, or I'd bring my point and shoot to our full-day rehearsals to make my yearly Nutcracker montage. Dance was all we had in common growing up, but with it being 4 to even 6 days a week, it was all we really needed. 10 years later, she and I still have our love for dance as well as a love for photography and the outdoors. She started teaching dance this past year, and I found myself accepting a teaching job at the same studio as well. She's a farmer, she cares for animals, collects dead bugs, works farmers' markets, and creates incredible jewelry. We started this Monday off with coffee (I got my first espresso, which was way too crazy - she showed up to my hyper-spilled coffee on the table), drove to her parents' home where we got some neat props, and then started our hike in an incredibly harsh late-morning sun. The hike was short but strenuous, sweating through our clothes and lugging along a sword, deer skull, and bags of clothes, we made it halfway up before we found some shade and an amazing breeze. Thank you, Jordan, for being absolutely stunning & for my first boudoir shoot.