Rangefinder Rising Stars 2019 Nominee Contest Gallery

This is my Rangefinder’s Rising Stars Contest Submission Gallery! For anyone who doesn’t know, Rangefinder is a photography magazine that holds a yearly competition meant to highlight 30 Rising Stars in the wedding photography industry. Only past Rangefinder winners can submit names to be considered, and only about 300 of those names are considered for the final contest. My name was submitted to the 2019 contest, and I was super crazy stupid honored to be one of that pool of nominees accepted into the final contest. It was absolutely wonderful to create a submission gallery, and gosh darn am I so delighted and thankful. The thing isn’t perfect, but I do adore every image in it.

I am so thankful that someone very dear to me took a chance and put my name into the competition hat, and I’m also thankful that this contest asked me to consider my work as both a businesswoman and as an artist. I was reminded to think deeply about what I can uniquely give and uniquely create because of what I love about wedding photography. Emotion. Strength. Bold color. Connection. Tenderness. Moments paused and still living vibrantly.

I realized that I truly try to bring every photo to its greatest emotional potential, no matter where it falls in the wedding story.

I describe my style as empathetic because I spend every wedding day focusing on relationships. I document my couple’s relationships in the most honest way possible, but also pay a lot of attention to the relationships between all their loved ones and all their guests. People make a wedding day beautiful and meaningful, more than anything else.

Though I will push my couples to explore their creativity, I never want to deliver photos that are more reflective of my creative style than theirs. I get to know my couple’s personalities and preferences so that I can be sure to create and deliver photos that really feel like them. 

I work as hard as I can and value every moment of the wedding day equally so that my couple will not only have beautiful photos of themselves and their event, but also many photos of their loved ones — both group and grins, and creative candids — that they can treasure. While I may have extra photos to edit, I feel that those portraits are incredibly important. 

I realized that my overall goal is to create photos that feel incredibly special and vibrant, but still approachable and warm. My style is often defined by dynamic color, and I feel strongly that color (or lack of) is one of the most meaningful and intentional ways we can tell a story as visual artists.

It’s a damn honor to photograph a wedding, and I think trying to capture all of those levels of love is one of the most powerful things a person can try to do. It was an honor (I’m so sorry for the cliche) to have been nominated and to have had the opportunity to submit to Rangefinder’s 30 Rising Stars competition. Writing the application and creating the gallery truly showed me how far I’ve come, but more importantly, I’ve been reminded how far I want to go in order to create the most valuable experience and the most heartfelt art that I can for my couples.