Madi & Brian (my sister in law and brother in law) own and run a specialty egg roll business called Madi’s on a Roll. This past April, they opened their first physical location in Exton, PA which is about 40-45 minutes outside of Philadelphia. Not only does their front of house have lots of natural light, but their office space in the back of house also has beautiful natural light. After texting back and forth with Madi, she and I dreamt up the idea of offering holiday photos with Santa in their office space on Saturday and Sunday earlier this month. 

Below are a few of the photos from the weekend. 

The event overall was a great experience – I got to photograph lots of families and friends and received lots of positive feedback from them. After having moved to Philadelphia, PA from Brooklyn, NY a little less than a year ago, it felt really good to be connecting with people and shooting again. This was my second holiday photo pop-up and looking back on that first experience 8 years ago, it’s hard not to reflect on my personal and professional growth.

Back in December of 2015, I was working at a family-friendly cafe in Brooklyn called ELK and we offered photos with Santa. The year before, I had launched my family photography brand (fka Janae Sprouts) and the owner of the cafe was a big supporter in helping me grow my business. She not only allowed me to use the space for a family photo pop-up at her other location called LARK, but she also hired me to take photos of families with Santa at ELK. Both of the locations of the cafes were in very high traffic areas, so I took a lot of photos and made of a lot of connections in those early years. Some of them became reoccurring clients throughout my time in New York. 

Looking back at that first holiday pop-up specifically, I will never forget how unprepared I was. The space for the photos was much smaller and had no natural light. So while I brought my lights and flash to accommodate this, I didn’t test anything before. I also didn’t think about framing for larger group sizes in the small space. Needless to say, some of the feedback that I received from families wasn’t all positive, and I definitely took that feedback to heart and the experience as a lesson learned. Flash forward to 2023, weeks ahead of this holiday photo pop-up I bought decorations and set them up in the space. I also did lots of light tests and was prepared with various seating arrangements should more than 3 people arrive to be photographed.

I’ve spent the past 16 years growing as a photographer. While some years have been more focused than others, I am very much looking forward to what this new year has in store. 

Last month I had the honor of photographing two of my close friends to commemorate their recent engagement. The session took place on Long Beach Island, NJ - a beach town on the Jersey shore that holds a special place in the all of the chapters of their love story. 

The forecast all week was up and down, with the chance of rain increasing as the days passed. The Saturday we arrived it was raining intermittently, but we decided to take a chance and go out and shoot. We stopped at two different pavilions; one bayside and one beachside. The full coverage of the pavilions offered varying qualities of light but ultimately would keep my friends dry, which was my priority.

The direction of the wind on the bayside was in our favor, creating many misty, windswept, and dreamy moments. Some of that said mist ended up on my lens and because I was shooting so quickly to capture the right windy moments, I didn’t notice it until after reviewing the images. 

After about 30 minutes, we drove over to the beach side. The beach side was much more overcast, but the dunes in the background provided lovely pops of complimentary colors to the bride-to-be’s yellow dress. 

The forecast for the next day was blue skies, so we woke up at sunrise to capture one more look for good measure. While the photos at sunrise were beautiful, the vibes captured through the rain were my favorite.

In early December last year, a dear friend of mine, Joshua Hatcher, reached out about needing new portraits. Like many performing musicians around the world, he hadn’t performed live since before the pandemic and wanted new images to promote his upcoming show on social. With the new year right around the corner, I always try to set forth creative intentions and this was exactly the inertia that I needed. 

Ahead of the session, we scheduled time to chat through visual direction and his plan for social so that I could make sure we had enough content in the end. We went over things again via email to drill down the vibe, and then scheduled the session early this month. 

The session went well, but I did something different this time. I shot with my mirrorless Olympus and my tried and true Canon. Unsurprisingly, I had a preference for the images shot on my Canon, but I think it really came down to the glass. I shot with a fixed 50mm lens on my Canon and the 14-42mm EZ lens on my Olympus. Until I get relatively similar glass for the Olympus it isn’t possible to make a real comparison, just yet. Sharing photos from the session below. The first and third image were shot on Canon and the second and forth were shot on Olympus.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I started my career photographing musicians (you can read a little more about that here, here, and most recently here). After this session wrapped, I felt inspired in a way that felt both new and familiar at the same time. The newness feeling was likely because of the new gear and the familiar feeling was because I used to do this all the time. 

First post of the new year, and despite being very close to the end of January, I am still sitting with and shifting through my resolutions, while also trying to reflect on the previous year. Last year was full of vivid memories spent with family and friends, but was a blur all the same. 2021 without a doubt went by faster than the year before and things really picked up once it started to get warmer outside. This somewhat explains why I haven’t posted anything since last April.

Partially because of how slowly time seemed to pass in 2020 (and partially because I was feeling sentimental), I started a new annual tradition. I organized all the photos I had taken with my iPhone that I felt highlighted the year before by month and I made a photo memory book via Artifact Uprising. 

The process of looking back made me curious enough to start looking through some of the older photos I had saved on my phone, especially the ones where I had used different apps and filters. These photos are automatically stored in separate folders, which made filtering less time consuming than going by year, month, and day in the Photo app. 

I am currently in the process of finishing off a black and white roll of film that I shot on my Pentax (hopefully successfully this time, after uncovering a pesky light leak), and waiting to ship another black and white roll of film that I shot on my Canon to Photodom, so I figured it would be a good practice to go through some of the folders from these apps and try to create some sort of cohesive series. Starting with HUJI.

HUJI Film - For those who aren’t familiar, it is an application that simulates a disposable camera, giving off that retro-quality. Every time you take a photo in the app, the image automatically loads the image in a random, “get what you get”, kind of way. Below are a couple of my favorite images that I have taken that while using this app. 

Next up, VSCO fka VSCO Cam.

VSCO - I started using this app back in 2013 and since then, it has grown to become so much more than an editing tool. The original application allowed users to edit their images, using preset filters and other editing tools (e.g exposure, contrast, sharpening, saturation, etc), but it is now a platform for the photography community. Many photographers use it as a living-breathing journal/portfolio, which makes it an awesome source of inspiration. It definitely has some lowkey Tumblr vibes, in a more streamline way. I initially started using the gallery function, but have fallen off and not posted 2016. You can view my mini-gallery here. Sharing a few of some of my more recent photos that were edited using the VSCO app below. 

The past 10 years have been a whirlwind of personal and professional growth. 

While I have been somewhat non-committed to my blogging, I challenged myself to go through my external hard drives and select a photo (or two) from each year, starting with 2009. This exercise was surprisingly meditative and a retrospective way to wrap up this year/decade. Below you will see some photos that I may have already shared on social and some that I haven’t, but each photo represents a moment in time of change. 

June 2009 was the end of undergrad and the beginning of my professional career as a photographer. I spent all of that summer of 2009 - winter 2012 focusing on the music scene in Seattle and all the characters surrounding it. Photographing live shows, creating promo materials for print and digital, and living and breathing all things related to music. 

In December 2012, I left it all behind for a new life in New York and only a year later, I realized that being only being a music photographer wasn’t going to cut it and I needed to widen my focus a bit. In 2014, Janae Sprouts was born. This brand was synergy of my various nanny gigs and my job as a barista in Brooklyn at a popular family-friendly cafe. 

In the summer of 2015, I quit my nanny and barista hustle to pursue photography full time. I had a steady stream of clients and referrals from Sprouts and also began assisting two world renowned photographers. I also taught a 6 week documentary photo class at the Courtelyou Library to kids from the ages of 6-18. Needless to say, that year I learned A LOT and became stronger technically as a photographer than ever before. 

The beginning of 2016, I got the opportunity of a lifetime to create photography for an upcoming podcast series on Audible with a former crime reporter turned documentarian. After almost a full year of the freelance hustle, I was ready for something more steady and landed a job at Etsy. While my role wasn’t 100% creative, it enabled me to connect with so many creatives and widen my network and idea of what was possible with a FT job. I was connecting with other artists again! This time, not just musicians; jewelry makers, yoga instructors, artisans, chefs, and fashion designers. All who were also working FT! That job also allowed me to travel to Europe for the first time, which is an opportunity that I missed in undergrad. Dublin, Berlin, London, and Paris! Since then, I’ve traveled to even more places in Europe in 2017 and 2018, and have continued to connect with more creatives, though I’m no longer working at Etsy.

This year was the hardest year thus far, mostly because there wasn’t enough time or space for innovation. FT work and life blurred together and because of that I grew a lot professionally but less so creatively.