Travel Diaries | Lagos, Sintra, Lisbon | Portugal

Last year I got to explore some pretty gorgeous places around the United States with my wonderful friend, April, and while sitting in a coffee shop this past winter we started to dream of more places to explore and visit! Since we did so much traveling within the country, we figured it was about time to grab our passports and explore somewhere new. After an overwhelming amount of ideas, we finally decided to spend our time exploring Portugal!!

With only a week, we had to try and narrow down our list of places we wanted to see so we decided to focus on southern and central Portugal. After flying in to Lisbon, we got our adorable and tiny rental car (Chip, because what else would you name a tiny mint green Fiat) and headed south to the coast! Our first couple days were spent leisurely wandering around Lagos and Luz! These charming coastal towns were so laid back and easy to explore.

Then after a quick trip out to Sagres to see the Fortaleza de Sagres and Cabo de Sao Vicente, we loaded up Chip and headed back up north to central Portugal and my favorite of our trip, Sintra!!

I thought driving around on the super narrow roads was fun in southern Portugal, but in Sintra and neighboring towns like Cascais took that to a whole new level! You'll see below how the houses open up right to the one lane cobblestone streets and having them built on giant hills just added a little extra challenge to driving and parking :)

After exploring the coast, palaces, and oodles of character and charm of Sintra we headed to our last city, Lisbon!! Being in the bigger city was a fun change of pace for our last couple of days and the hills of Lisbon gave us plenty of a workout as we walked around the different neighborhoods.

If you get the chance I would highly recommend taking a trip to Portugal!! As you can see, the bright colorful buildings with the never ending variety of tiles, patterns, colors, character, and charm are so fun to wander around. And having beautiful beaches and relaxing breezes through the palm trees doesn't hurt either ;) I really thought that Portugal was the perfect combination of a tropical vacation and old European charm and character. While there are SO many places I want to see yet, I hope to get back to Portugal again someday!

Travel Bucket List | Destination Wedding and Portrait Photographer

People often ask what I do after wedding season is over, and while I wish I could say just sleep and travel, this is my time of year to not only take a break but to catch up on all of the tasks of running a business that get put off during the craziness of wedding season! Yes, I will be taking lots of MUCH needed time off, but one of the main things I'll be doing is gearing up and making changes for 2017.

Each year I try to make changes and take steps forward to having a photography business that not only serves my clients and gives them the best experience and images possible, but also feeds my passion, soul, and drive! One of the main things that does that is travel!! So, I've decided to just put it out in the universe that these are some of the places that I would LOVE to photograph people in. AND a special little deal for you, if you book a wedding, elopement, or portrait session in one of these places I will shoot it for free. FREE! 

I am not trying to discount professional photographers and what we do, this is just a personal goal of mine and my desire to photograph people in these gorgeous places is worth is to me to not make any money doing it. I still believe it is VERY important to value the hard work that professional photographers do and to pay for quality work, however I'm also a person that values experiences and I would love to capture epic portraits in these locations. Now, there is one tiny little catch, you would still need to pay for travel costs for me and my second shooter (airfare, accommodation the night before and night of your event/session, and transportation from airport) but that is it. 

I want to photograph adventurous and awesome people in gorgeous and epic locations. This is me officially saying it to the universe :) Where are these places that I will shoot for only travel costs? New Zealand, Iceland, Italy, France, Thailand, Australia, Spain, Brazil, and South Africa. Have a location that's not listed? Just shoot me an email and tell me more!

Mountain Elopement Styled Shoot | Glacier National Park, Montana

In October I got to cross off a state and national park that I have never been to, Glacier National Park in Montana! While we were lucky enough to go in fall when the leaves were still changing, that also meant there was lots of extra fog covering what I'm sure are some epic mountain views. We had planned to do a simple little styled shoot while there up in the mountains, but the weather just did not cooperate. Luckily though when you're in such a beautiful place your backup location is pretty fantastic as well! And even better was having the most wonderful couple to photograph!! These two truly exemplify the type of client that I hope to work with. They were both so sweet, kind, and fun, but then they were also adventurous and willing to do anything to get beautiful portraits. Amazing people + willingness to go the extra mile + gorgeous location = stunning portraits :) And huge should out to Renee at Madison Wedding Flowers for creating a gorgeous floral crown and bouquet!

Travel Diaries | Glacier National Park, Montana

I feel like I'm a broken record on this, but I really love to travel and especially in mountains!! I don't know what it is, but there's just something so special about the rugged landscape and fresh air that just excites and energizes me. Sadly though on this trip we didn't really get to see that stunning rugged landscape because of the weather. Fog and rain covered the mountains last week the whole time we were there! But it's just a good excuse now to go back :) 

How I Became A Photographer | A Personal Post

This week I'm working through my backlog of images that have been patiently waiting to be finished (having a computer go down did not help my productivity!) and I came across this image and for some reason it just made me think of how I got started in photography! And seeing as how I'm juuust a little behind on blogging, I thought I would take a second and just share my story for those of you that don't know.

Growing up I never had anything even close to a "fancy" camera. I always had cheap point-and-shoots, but every time I filled a roll of film I could NOT wait to get it developed. Fast forward to high school when I finally took a formal photography class through a local university that was just a creative film photography class held at night for beginners. Even having the most basic of assignments (photographing lines, stopping motion, etc) made me so happy and excited!

You would think I would've gone to college to study photography, but it wasn't until I was almost done with my accounting degree and I spent a semester abroad that I decided life was just too short to spend 40 hours a week doing something that I wasn't passionate about. It was then I decided to go after my dream career and did a 180 from the corporate world and headed off for a formal photography education in Massachusetts! I was spoiled learning on medium format film and digital camera systems and all of the professional lighting gear we could want. After I learned what an f-stop and shutter speed actually were, I headed to New York City for a couple internships before moving to Boston where I finally started to shoot weddings and fell in love with being a wedding photographer.

This black and white portrait kind of made me wish I had shot it on film, which started the whole thought process of where I started on film, but it kind of inspired me to get back to those roots and going out to shoot just for fun and to never forget the pure joy and excitement that I feel when I pick up a camera. I have been doing a lot of reflecting lately on where I want to go with my photography business, but I haven't been doing enough of remembering why I started in the first place. I'm glad I saw this image today and it reminded me of why I started this crazy journey to begin with :)