Burris Family

Heather and I stumbled upon each other’s photography website five years ago when we were just starting out our photography businesses. We were both redhead English majors who loved reading books and telling stories with our cameras. I had the pleasure of working with her, sharing several coffees and conversations with her, and enjoyed seeing her artistry unfold as a documentary photographer.

In fact, Heather is a big reason I am embarking in this whole documentary motherhood project. Over the years I have been so enamored by the way she captured such beautiful relationships with her camera, and although she has laid aside her photography business for these two beautiful girls, she has not stopped artistically and beautifully recording her stories of life and motherhood.

When I started thinking through offering this kind of session, I got coffee with her and spilled out all my ideas and picked her brain about it all. She was incredibly kind and helpful with explaining how I can best support mamas and encouraging me to go for it. That’s why I’m so excited to have been able to photograph her and her two girls for my first motherhood session.

It was a slow morning in the Burris household. The girls were in jammies, at first skeptically taking in the stranger with the camera, but in a matter of minutes I was the top requested playmate. I did my best to make myself unobtrusive. I slid into the corner and captured the remarkable act of a mother playing with her daughters, cup of tea in hand.

As we moved through the morning routine of breakfast, then changing out of jammies, baking (and more snack eating), story time, and water color painting, I was really taken up with the rhythm of their triad, and the grace that Heather executed even amidst the tears and fits (and there were some). As I begin shooting these sessions, I am quickly learning that your kids do not need to (nor likely will be) on their best behavior, your house does not need to look like it came out of HGTV, nor do you need to be in the trendiest outfit or have your makeup done to find and document a little beauty in the ordinary.