My 2019

And what a year it was…again!

So much shooting, so many new faces, and places, and boy, it was a heck of a year!

2019 was absolutely packed and my goodness…I’m hoping I can get through it all! I’ll be going through my personal best moments and sharing my favorite photos and some of my best photos, too! Similar to My 2018, there won’t be any particular order to these photos, but I’m hoping to make this blog packed with as many photos as I can!

So…let’s take a trip down 2019!

2019 started in Massachusetts, as it usually does since I was in college still! It also started with a knee injury, so that was pretty sweet! I had reconnected with an old high school friend pictured above, Kate, and we had a lovely time shooting in Massachusetts, including Andover and Newburyport. Something I hadn’t realized before this year was perhaps how easy it was to reconnect with old faces. As the year played out, that became a pretty important lesson to learn! People come and go, and honestly, I came and went, too! It’s nice to know that people from the past can and will pop up when you rediscover them again.

Perhaps one of the greatest days was February 14th, 2019. Me and my best friend both happened to be recently single, so we spent the day eating and getting Dairy Queen, chatting for the better part of the day. I also purchased the camera that I use today! I had been lucky enough to use cameras from my college but the time finally came for me to buy my own camera, and let me tell you – it’s a wonderful feeling! The photos above are all from the first day of shooting – I had four shoots that day! It was jam-packed but I loved every second of it. Spending the whole day shooting was not a bad thing, at all!

March was probably my busiest month out of the year. I had the most shoots ever that month! I was very busy but my photos show how great of a month it really was. I had a lot of first time shoots but also a fair amount of old friendly faces – and even a little but or international travel! My best friend and I decided to go to Niagara Falls one day before we watched a Canisius vs. Niagara University game and it was amazing. I’d actually only been there once since living in Buffalo, and I hadn’t seen it in the snow! Unfortunately, Juliet didn’t bring her passport, but I really wanted to go to the Canadian side, something I’d never done before! And let me tell you – it didn’t disappoint. It’s definitely worth it to see it from both sides!

Oh, and make sure you make it to a Rainforest Cafe – they have one on both the American side and the Canadian side, and it is LIT! 🙂

Oh, and how can I talk about the first half of the year without recapping my best photo ever…

Kaila and I have formed such a close friendship over photography through the past year or so. It’s kinda funny she happens to hold my favorite picture and best shot I’ve ever taken (above, top left), because our first shoot ever was a total disaster! Long story shoot, we had planned a sunrise shoot with another friend, but failed to account for when the sun was actually going to be up, and how cold the weather was actually going to be. The location was alright, but since it was so cold (literally single digits, not accounting for wind chill), we had to end early and leave early. We barely took any photos! Fast-forward from March 2018 to September 2018, we shot again for the first time, and the results were much, much better. Since that fateful day, we’ve shot many times for probably thousands of photos – and some real keepers, too. I don’t know if anyone will ever believe this, but it only took one try to get it. I didn’t even realize how good of a shot it was until I was looking at it bigger on my computer screen. Her hair in the air, her face, eyes; her hands, so perfectly placed for the photos.

ONE. TAKE.

Yeah, I still can’t believe it either.

Go figure.

This year I had a lot more dramatic-style pictures, with a huge emphasis on hair. I’m not sure what got into me, but I loved the look of some of these really dramatic hair flips and hair whips. Hair is such an intimate part and a very unique thing to utilize in photos. Each girl I worked with had hair that worked different, dependent on thickness, or amount of hair, or whatever. It was honestly very interesting working with everyone, figuring out what looked incredible and what we could do differently. This carried over from shoot to shoot, and I tried to make each one different from the last,

Here’s a few more above – as I got more creative with each person, or as the year progressed, the style of the picture changed, creating something that was unique to that person.

This year I also did a series of dramatically lit portraits. These are a few above, but I definitely took more and tried lots and lots of portraits. There’s something I really love about them. I think it’s the close-up dramatics – they feel more personal, and lots of times, the subject can look better not looking at the camera, in order to create distance between the viewer and the photo. However, two of the photos above have subjects looking directly into the camera, and both have different facial expressions. They work in their own ways – the one of TayTay in the boat seems to create distance – she’s staring down the camera, almost saying to not come closer, while the one of Lex holding the coffee cup seems to be rather inviting to the viewer.

May brought about the end of my time in Buffalo. After four years of Canisius College, my journey there came to an end. I completed an internship at 43North, where I did lots of content creation, including video production, photography, and podcasting. It prepared me well for exiting college and my current job I hold! Leaving college was the hardest thing I’d had to do – even though I hadn’t grown to love the city of Buffalo as much as natives, I loved the people I met there along the way. I met so many in my senior year through the photography community there and made friends I know I’ll have for a long time. So, here’s a bunch of photos that detail some of my best Buffalo shots and friends I made along the way.

Y’all are so awesome.

I still miss you, Buffalo. I’ll see you soon.

Well, with the end of May brought the beginning of something beautiful in June. Long story short, I moved across the country to Utah, landing in Salt Lake City doing social media for two companies. I roadtripped out alone, taking about seven days to cross from Massachusetts to Utah. My first stop was Buffalo, but I’ll let some of the photos do the talking.

It wasn’t a terribly hard move, but meeting people was a whole new struggle to get used to. Luckily, I’ve met some of the best people out there! Most of my friends are in the photography community, so of course, I’ve got some pretty pictures! But as a whole, living in Utah is quite something else. I’ve traveled to the West Coast before, but I had never actually visited Salt Lake before. I’d been in southern Utah at Arches, Zion, and Bryce National Park, but nothing northern of that. One thing that still gets me going is seeing the mountains wherever I drive. That’s something you don’t get out in the northeast. They’re just…right there…waiting to be climbed, hiked, camped in, and explored. I can’t even describe it! So, of course, it’s yielded some unbelievable photography locations.

Now, since I did move to a new place and I wanted to meet people and do fun things, the amount of photoshoots (and photos as a whole) actually decreased from earlier in the year. But, what got insanely better was my editing. It’s kind of funny seeing the change from the beginning of the year to the end, but my photos seem to just…look better in the later months than they did in the earlier months. It’s growth, and it’s wonderful to see it. And, maybe I’m being biased because I’m in a new and beautiful places, but the photos can honestly speak for themselves! So, I’ll let them do the talking for a second!

Andddd, where would I be if I didn’t talk about Hannah! I randomly found her on Instagram and messaged her, asking if she wanted to shoot. She said yes, and we’ve shot so many times in the short six months that I’ve been there, especially considering I took about a month and a half off from November to December from shooting! We’ve shot so many of our ideas and we have many more in the works – and some really cool photos planned in the future, so definitely stay tuned for those! It’s funny how easy it is to get to know people and build such a strong friendship in such a short period of time. The last time we shot, she joked that we need to hangout sometime without a camera pointed at her face, and honestly, that would be awesome! We’ve grown to be such great friends, and that’s one thing I love about photography – it brings people together who never would have met otherwise.

It’s such a beautiful thing.

Have a look at some of our photos below!

I haven’t traveled around Utah that much, only taking short day trips here and there, but I have been able to see a bit of my new state! I took a day trip up to Bear Lake, which covers both Utah and Idaho, and I’ve made numerous little weekend trips to Logan, Utah, and lots and lots of day trips to the neighboring Wasatch mountains. Bear Lake was one of the best days, and I didn’t even take that many pictures! I was more living in the moment, but I’m hoping to take more pictures and remember that I can go back and visit these places more and more often! Here’s a couple shots from Bear Lake – and I bet I’ll be visiting there even more in 2020!

Utah is honestly one big treasure trove – and I want to explore it endlessly until I’ve seen every single piece! I’m still not sure why I moved to Utah. For some reason, God wants me there, and I’m just listening to Him and trusting the process. But so far, it’s very fun. It’s incredibly beautiful, and I am very fortunate to live in such a beautiful state, so close to wondrous creations of nature and beautiful sights and sound. Here’s some of the best of Utah, and some of my personal favorite pictures. Enjoy!

So, there we go. There’s my 2019 in review. Huge steps, different places with different faces, and a whole lot of adventure and photos packed into one, colossal year. I think a lot of people may look back on their years and wonder what they accomplished, and maybe they think they’ve accomplished less than they think! With me, I don’t have that problem. I have all of these photos to reminisce on what a heck of a year it’s been. Every one of my friends in these photos can tell you that I love having my camera out with me and I always photograph everything I can. Sure, I miss moments and maybe I don’t take what critics think are the best photos, but honestly, some of my favorite photos (and what I consider to be my best photos) often have a deeper story attached to them. It’s what was said, or what I was doing with a particular person that defines a photo for me. I wish I could include every single photo in here that I adore to pieces, but then this blog would never end!

What gives me hope is that there will be more adventure, more photoshoots, more friends to meet (and photograph!) and more top photos! I have standards to reach and surpass – simple as that. There’s my 2020 goal in a nutshell. Photograph more, explore more, take better shots, and keep improving with each consecutive month.

And there it is.

My 2019.

God is good.

Parting shot:

Next blog: A fresh start in 2020. You ready?