I believe the most honest photos happen
when nobody is performing.

I didn’t plan to become a photographer. I planned to keep watching moments slip by. Then one afternoon, watching my neighbor’s family pile into each other on a front porch in Carmichael — laughing, messy, completely themselves — I picked up a camera and something clicked that wasn’t the shutter.

That was over ten years ago. Since then I’ve photographed more than 400 Sacramento-area families, watched hundreds of couples say “I do,” held my breath in dozens of nurseries while newborns slept in the morning light, and chased more than a few very enthusiastic dogs across Folsom Lake.

What I’ve learned is this: the photos that people actually hang on their walls — the ones they call me crying about years later — are almost never the posed ones. They’re the moment before. The look across the room. The toddler who suddenly decided to bolt. The grandmother who didn’t know anyone was watching.

I build every session around creating the conditions for those moments. The rest, I just try not to miss.