Long before I knew anything about photography, I was the person pulling out the film camera and taking as many pictures as I could.

When our third daughter was born, I tried taking my own newborn pictures of her with a point-and-shoot camera. They were terrible. I can look at those pictures now and compare them to the babies I've photographed over the years and hardly believe they're from the same person.

But I loved it.

When we were living in Montana, my husband bought me a better camera. I had two photographer friends there whose beautiful work inspired me, and I wanted to understand how they were doing it.

We lived in the boonies and had dial-up internet, so there weren't endless photography videos at my fingertips. I sat down with that camera manual and learned. I figured out aperture, f-stops, manual settings and everything that little camera would let me do.

Eventually I went to Tyler and told him, "I can't use this camera anymore."

I'd outgrown it.

When we moved back home to Washington and the family farm, I invested in my first more serious Canon camera and decided I was going to pay for it with photography work.

That was 15 years ago.

I've been learning ever since.

These days, life looks a little different than it did when I started this business.

Tyler and I still live on our family farm here in Washington. We still have two kids at home, while having grown children and grandchildren who have expanded our family in all sorts of wonderful ways.

We also love to travel.

Both of us grew up traveling across the United States, and it's something we continued with our own kids. We love finding new restaurants, seeing new scenery and experiencing the way life looks a little different depending on where you are in the country. Now our grown kids are traveling with their own families, and having children who live out of state has given us even more reasons to pack a bag and go.

At home, give me good coffee, earrings and lip gloss. I love my milk cows, lifting weights and feeling strong, and I'm pretty determined not to start dressing like an old grandma anytime soon.

And babies?

I'll take every snuggle I can get.

Becoming a grandma has been one of life's sweetest surprises, and I've been blessed enough to photograph many of my grand babies along the way.

Before photography, I spent some time modeling, which meant studying fashion magazines and learning what actually works in front of a camera. I spent hours figuring out what to do with my face, my hands and my body.

Turns out, that knowledge has come in pretty handy.

I love styling a session. I'm drawn to editorial photography, beautiful light, clean compositions and negative space. I love an image that could live on the pages of a magazine.

But raising and photographing my own children has taught me something else too:

Not every photograph needs to be editorial.

Sometimes the picture you treasure years later is the simple one where your child is looking straight at you and smiling.

I want both.

I want to create something beautiful while never losing sight of the person I'm photographing. I don't want the location, the styling, a trendy editing preset or even my photography to become more important than them.

Because styles will change. Your child will change.

And twenty years from now, I want you to look at that photograph and see your child.

Take the pictures. Print them. Have them somewhere you can quickly pull out!

I have photographed all four of my graduates. I've made beautiful photographs for my own family.

And I'm also the professional photographer who has to admit that I haven't always been very good about getting my own albums finished or putting those photographs where we can enjoy them.

I wish I had.

Because now I understand just how much I love pulling out old photographs and seeing those faces again.

That's part of what I want to give the people I photograph.

I've spent 15 years learning my craft, but I've also spent those years raising children, watching them grow up and learning just how quickly one season becomes another.

So yes, I want your photographs to be beautiful.

But more than anything, I want them to still matter to you when this season is long gone.