Transforming Perspectives Image Gallery

EXHIBIT VOL. 1 SPRING 2021

 EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHERS

Agueda Sanfiz. Ben Heasman. Bennie Weeks. Cheryl Autry. Diana Hagues. Elisse Carma Weinert. Emma Collins. Fernanda Luz. Flávia Martins. Fleur Louise. Frieder Kremer. Gretchen Yost. Iko-Ojo Mercy Haruna. Jenna Hobbs. Jess Cheetham. Jessica Hubbard.
Joosje Janssen. Jordan Lyall. Justin McGregor. Karyn Novakowski. Kelly Schmidt. Kristin Watkins. Lisa Hu Chen. Maggie Devereux. Manu Rigoni. Mark Looney. Melissa Helmick. Melissa McClure. Michelle Macirella. Mikaela Martin. Mila Kichalowski.
Minna Ridderstolpe. Monique Olive. Pamela Anticole. Polina Subbotina. Rihaam Tarhini. Sabine Doppelhofer. Sara Paolucci. Simona Dietiker. Sonja Stich. Stephana Ferrell. Svatka Schneider. Sven Berger. Tiffany Luong.

Hover over the image to see the photographer’s bio. Click on the image to enlarge the photo.
If you would like to purchase a print, please contact us through the contact form and we will connect you to the photographer, or contact the photographer directly.

Support, balance and courage - Elisse Carma Weinert

Elisse Carma Weinert is an American documentary family photographer living near Milan, Italy with her husband and three children. She specializes in shooting births and family travel and teaches photography in English and Italian. An introvert, an enneagram type 4, and a world traveler, she is currently working to tell the story of her journey out of the Mormon faith through pictures.

Hopscotch Ghost - Sabine Doppelhofer

Sabine Doppelhofer is a former hydogeologist and environmental systems scientist, mother and self-taught photographer who lives with her family in the south of Austria. She found her love for photography as a teenager, loving to make black and white prints in her own small darkroom in her parents' basement. With the birth of her first child, she found her love for children's photography and started her photography business 6 years ago. With her husband, she decided not to show the faces of her children. She specializes in anonymous children photography to still show wonderful photographs of children. She loves to combine clean, colorful compositions with anonymous captures of childhood.

Besides documentary family photography, Sabine also works as a commercial photographer in the wooden toy industry, taking mainly natural and unposed promotional shots.

Nap with ice cream - Simona Dietiker

Simona is a documentary photographer based in Switzerland, where she lives with her husband and her two daughters. Since 2017, she’s been documenting family life, as well as births and weddings. She mainly works near Zurich but loves to travel in the whole country.

As a nostalgic person, photos have always played a big part in her life. With the birth of her first daughter, she rediscovered the importance of all these small little moments, of the true emotions and relationships; recognizing the beauty, the uniqueness of all these messy, funny, emotional moments of everyday life. She loves to capture the little gestures between family members that tell the story of how much love they feel for each other.

The Harpist - Iko-Ojo Mercy Haruna

Iko-Ọjọ Mercy Haruna, aka Mercy is a portrait and documentary photographer dedicated to capturing the fleeting moments of family life. She focuses on stories that capture the beauty of the everyday as well as those that dive into deeper conversations about the realities of motherhood.

This is 90. - Jess Cheetham

Jess Cheetham is a photographer from Bath, UK. She specialises in documentary family, portraiture and fine art photography.

Jess loves documenting life, in all its gritty, raw, struggling beauty. She finds inspiration in the perceived mundanity of daily domestic life. She is drawn to moments of connection, physical touch and expressions within the routines of home.

Jess has formal fine art training from Edinburgh College of Art and photographic training from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).

Celebrating As Unicorns - Pamela Anticole

Pamela’s career began in street photography, leading her to a stint in journalism at a local Pittsburgh newspaper before dedicating herself to documentary wedding photography. In her personal work, she uses photography as a meditative tool, exploring quiet topics that afford her thought space while leading her to novel experiences of her suburban environment. She strives to see the mundane uncommonly.

Pamela is committed to empowering suppressed voices with story and handing women photographic tools to journal their own lives. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA with her partner and 4 strong-minded, wildly independent children.

Teenage angst - Emma Collins

Over the last 10 years, Emma Collins has become one of the leading family photographers in the UK, working with clients from around the world. She has acquired several top awards at the Documentary Family Awards, including consecutively winning the environmental portrait prize in 2019 and 2020 and the pandemic category in 2020, as well as being named the overall winner of the Documentary Family Awards 2020. She was selected for the Female Voice Exhibition 2019 and has recently been shortlisted for the British Photography Awards 2021 in the Documentary category and shortlisted for the Sony Alpha Female Award 2021 for the World Photography Organisation.

Mirror - Frieder Kremer

Frieder Kremer is a documentary photographer based in and around Berlin, Germany. Having started in the genres of street and travel photography, he quickly discovered his passion for capturing more personal moments by documenting the lives of families. His work is characterized by a graphical approach that nonetheless embraces the emotions of his subjects and particularly offers a special view on the hidden beauty of silent and allegedly unspectacular moments.

Breaking Point - Justin McGregor

Justin McGregor is a photographer based in Tacoma, WA where he lives with his wife and two kids. Always with a camera in hand, he spends his free time exploring the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Through documentary photography, he aims to celebrate the everyday moments. You can follow his work on Instagram @itsbetteroutside. 

We Are Family - Ski Vacation - Fleur Louise

Fleur Louise is from Perth in Western Australia but lives in Washington D.C. with her husband and two children. Fleur is a realist. She likes to tell it like it is and doesn't have time for shams or pretense. Her family photography reflects this. She likes to capture families just as they are. She believes, after living in many different places around the world, that all families are messy and in amongst the mess, is a whole lot of love. In 2015, she decided to start her own photography business and in 2020, founded Positive Light, a photography service aimed at making professional photography accessible to all families, especially those who struggle to make ends meet.

No support from siblings - Kristin Watkins

Kristin Watkins is a documentary family photographer working in Atlanta, GA.  She loves to capture the unique, messy, beautiful, crazy and quiet moments that make a family special. She believes that we learn more from our mistakes than from our successes, so embraces the imperfect and the underdogs.  She strives to make pictures that break the mold of the perfect family photo but instead remind both parents and kids of how their lives were at this moment in time. She does this through day-in-the-life photo sessions where she observes, looking for the small moments that reflect love and emotion. A believer in the possibility of social justice, Kristin aims to photograph marginalized community members in a way that both honors their struggle and celebrates their resilience. She is a founding member of the Atlanta DocTogs, a group of local photographers dedicated to documentary photography, and volunteers for Found Families, an organization that documents adoptive families.  

Studying the Bighorn Sheep Hoof - Getchen Yost

Gretchen Yost is a documentary photographer based in the small, mountain community of Pinedale, Wyoming. While her photographs cover all aspects of family life, she is especially inspired by people and their connection to the land. The work shown here is part of an on-going personal project exploring the intersection of hunting culture and domestic life.

Tayo and Toyosi - Iko-Ojo Mercy Haruna

Iko-Ọjọ Mercy Haruna, aka Mercy is a portrait and documentary photographer dedicated to capturing the fleeting moments of family life. She focuses on stories that capture the beauty of the everyday as well as those that dive into deeper conversations about the realities of motherhood.

Father - Mila Kichalowski

Mila Kichalowski was born in Florianópolis, Brazil. She started in documentary family photography because of her husband's terminal cancer diagnosis (Feb. 2017), because she found it extremely necessary that their children had their father's memory alive. She started to document the growth of Clarice, who was 1 year old at the time and her son Cassiano, who was 6 and that is when she started to fall in love with documentary photography. It has been 1 year since her love has passed, but because of the photographs, he lives intensely with Mila, Clarice, and Cassiano, and always will.

Acceptance and forgiveness - Kelly Schmidt

Kelly Schmidt is an award-winning Brazilian photographer and visual artist, she has her Master in Social Memory and Cultural Heritage, author of the book 'Laços da Mama’ 2020, and educator for photographers. She is dedicated to producing bodies of work that are loyal to her purpose to be a filter for fractions of experience, sensations, and multi-disciplinary ways of telling daily life stories.

Taking care from afar - Manu Rigoni

Manu Rigoni is a Brazilian photographer living in Recife, Pernambuco, Northeast of Brazil. She discovered the power of storytelling within documentary photography, even when she is underwater diving. Manu Rigoni has a degree in Audiovisual and she is currently an Art History student. Also she is a co-founder of FDF Brazil - a directory exclusively dedicated to family documentary photographers.

Together - Jenna Hobbs

Jenna Hobbs is a documentary family photographer located on a small farm in Alberta, Canada. Growing up a 'townie' she is appreciating a rural, wild and free childhood raising her five children, who she often refers to as ragamuffins. Her photos often have a classic, nostalgic feel, highlighting all the raw moments of adolescence, taking the viewer back to their own childhood.

Escape - Sven Berger

Sven is a photographer, husband, and father of three children. Born in 1972, he grew up in Dresden, East Germany. His love for photography started early when he was at school, but despite his love of photography he studied to become an IT professional. After the birth of his first child, his love and passion for photography was rekindled as he tried to capture every second of the passing time. Today, Sven’s passion and love for photography can be seen in each of his images which focus on documenting real life moments. He is a long-time contributor to Getty Images specializing in documentary photography, has had numerous works featured in Vogue, and has several accolades from the Child Photography Competition, Documentary Family Awards, and “This is Reportage Family”. Sven currently resides in Dresden, Germany.

Trust - Monique Olive

Monique Olive is a Brazilian documentary family photographer since 2008. She seeks spontaneity, introspectivity, subjectivity, and proximity to the ones captured. It was during the pandemic period that she got deep inside her own family and discovered the true beauty and power of intimacy.

As a mother of two young boys, she believes that it's important to give special attention to the first childhood these days, to construct a better future.

Growing Up - Maggie Devereux

Maggie Devereux is a documentary photographer originally from Edmonton, Alberta Canada who now calls Toronto home. Her unique take on exploring everyday family life was the foundation of her career and her work has been featured and celebrated in national publications such as Hello! Canada and the National Post. In addition to her work as a highly in-demand documentary family photographer, Maggie is currently working on her first extended gallery show which will premiere in Toronto in the Spring of 2022. The core of her work rests on her fundamental belief that images can take us to any moment in time, the good and the bad, and remind us of what was and what can become of the journey that is our every day.

Body and legs - Manu Rigoni

Manu Rigoni is a Brazilian photographer living in Recife, Pernambuco, Northeast of Brazil. She discovered the power of storytelling within documentary photography, even when she is underwater diving. Manu Rigoni has a degree in Audiovisual and she is currently an Art History student. Also she is a co-founder of FDF Brazil - a directory exclusively dedicated to family documentary photographers.

Spring “break” - Agueda Sanfiz

Agueda is a Spanish arts administrator and documentary family photographer living in Tampa, USA. She uses the camera as an intermediary with the world and a therapist to look inside and out. Documenting families helps her explore the beautiful complexities of what it means to raise children in present times. Her signature images reflect on the paradox of reducing intense parental experiences to awkwardly funny moments frozen in time. Her work is filled with color, joy, and humor.

She is currently producing Picture (im) Perfect: a collective exhibition and book about documentary family photography to be shown in Tampa from April to June 2021.

Orange Everything - Ben Heasman

Something about photography connects with far-reaching places.

And for Ben, exploring family life with this premise in mind, where things are not altogether close at hand or understood straight away, seems both reasonable and helpful. And perhaps even truthful.

Documentary family photography is, for Ben, an opportunity to find an expansive and layered view of family. Where memory and geography are alive in each moment. And where the outside is let in and drawn close. 

Ben has a background in fine art and education - and an emerging family life in the foreground - which have all fed into his practice of photography. Everything has been significant.

A Good Day - Melissa McClure

Melissa is a California native living in Los Angeles with her two young sons and a Brit husband. Her life affords many interesting opportunities to document while keeping up with her three adventurous boys and juggling the demands of full-time work and family. Her images capture honest everyday moments of childhood. A self-taught photographer, she considers herself a constant student of documentary photography.

Nosebleedgirl - Minna Ridderstolpe

Minna is a documentary family photography from Stockholm, Sweden. She is specialized in shooting the struggle of everyday life with kids, both toddlers or teenagers. She believes that the beauty in our lives is to find in both the dirty and raw, as well in the quiet and simple.

Travel with kids - Lisa Hu Chen

Through her lens, Lisa is always in search of that documentary approach. Her background in graphic design and degree in communications is evident in the color, composition, and storytelling embedded in every frame she makes, regardless of the subject.

Feeling her career in advertising and marketing had run its course, Lisa started funneling her passion into photography after the birth of her first child. Less than a decade later, what started as part-time experimentation has evolved into her full-fledged true calling. Lisa was recently honored as one of the “Top 10 Photographers USA” and “Top 50 in the World” by This is Reportage Family, made Peerspace’s list of “Top 5 Best Food Photographers in Orange County,” and has received multiple awards from the Documentary Family Awards. Lisa’s work has been showcased in exhibitions at the International Center for Photography and the Matca Gallery in Hanoi, Vietnam, and has been published in numerous photography and local food publications.

Always with camera in hand and family alongside, Lisa and her husband chase their four energetic kids as they happily wanderlust and eat their way through cities and countrysides all over the world.

A connection above the conceivable- family - Rihaam Tarhini

Rihaam is a documentary photographer based in Berlin. As a mother of three, she values the real moments in life and knows exactly how imperfect and chaotic daily family life can be. In the pictures she takes, it is essential for her to show the connection between the individuals in the story.

To document the common denominator of the various cultures is one of her major aims.

Through the pictures, she wants to tell stories and give a glance at the beauty of the simple daily life.

To capture the authentic raw moments of connection and keep them for eternity.

When looking at these pictures in the future, families should have the chance to feel the warmth of these moments once again.

posthumous diary - Fernanda Luz

Fernanda Luz is a Brazilian photographer, with a degree in Journalism and Specialization in Language, Culture, and Media, both at Universidade Estadual Paulista. Currently, she is trying to see the world with a beautiful and sincere look, photographing weddings and families around Brazil.

It Takes A Village - Melissa Helmick

Melissa is a birth and parenthood photographer located in Southeastern Virginia. Birth photography is her focus but she loves telling the honest, and often emotional, journeys through the different seasons of parenthood from bump to baby, including the postpartum period. She is also finishing training to be a birth, postpartum, and bereavement doula. Recently she has discovered her heart's work and has begun a passion project called Overcoming in Parenthood highlighting the silent struggles parents face in their journey to becoming parents or during parenting days. Subjects included are Domestic Violence, Postpartum Depression/Anxiety, Pregnancy & Infant Loss, Pregnancy After Loss, Infertility, ADHD, Mental Health and so much more. It is her goal to bring awareness to these stigmatized topics as well as a sense of community and healing. When she isn't throwing herself into her passions at work, Melissa can be found taking self-portraits and photographing flowers as well as trying to keep up with the chaos at home with her husband, 3 rambunctious children, and their dog, Lilly. She loves all things Mother Nature, coffee, and art.

Contemplation of simplicity - Flávia Martins

Flávia Linhares Martins, from Brazil, got involved with photography in 2020 motivated by personal projects aimed at portraying the daily life of her own family and close friends. She believes in the power of Family Documentary Photography as a look inside us, to our innermost selves, and the possibility to show the world the grandeur of simple relationships. She is an award recipient from Fine Art Association (2021) and Amarelos (2020).

A Covid Kiss - Mikaela Martin

Mikaela Martin is an Australian documentary and fine art photographer, based in South Florida, USA.

Before picking up a camera professionally, Mikaela was an actor and filmmaker. This work and practice are very much at play in her photography. She is interested in the ways we confront our own fragility and wonder; both from within, and through the people and spaces we inhabit.

Much of Mikaela’s photography explores her relationship with her two young daughters, featured most recently in her ongoing project “Good Lord, leave your Mother alone”.

Mikaela’s work has been published, awarded, and exhibited locally and internationally. She is a member of Women Photograph.

Never a dull moment - Emma Collins

Over the last 10 years, Emma Collins has become one of the leading family photographers in the UK, working with clients from around the world. She has acquired several top awards at the Documentary Family Awards, including consecutively winning the environmental portrait prize in 2019 and 2020 and the pandemic category in 2020, as well as being named the overall winner of the Documentary Family Awards 2020. She was selected for the Female Voice Exhibition 2019 and has recently been shortlisted for the British Photography Awards 2021 in the Documentary category and shortlisted for the Sony Alpha Female Award 2021 for the World Photography Organisation.

Boop - Jordan Lyall

Jordan Lyall has been a professional photographer for over ten years but is a recent (and very enthusiastic!) convert to the documentary family genre.  She loves the power that documentary images have - capturing the beauty of those everyday moments that are too often lost to time as our families grow.   Jordan lives east of Toronto, Canada with her two creative and spirited daughters.  She appreciates great conversation, a good laugh, and will always stop to pet your cat or dog.  

Piñata - Mikaela Martin

Mikaela Martin is an Australian documentary and fine art photographer, based in South Florida, USA.

Before picking up a camera professionally, Mikaela was an actor and filmmaker. This work and practice are very much at play in her photography. She is interested in the ways we confront our own fragility and wonder; both from within, and through the people and spaces we inhabit.

Much of Mikaela’s photography explores her relationship with her two young daughters, featured most recently in her ongoing project “Good Lord, leave your Mother alone”.

Mikaela’s work has been published, awarded, and exhibited locally and internationally. She is a member of Women Photograph.

Olga and her daughters - Sonja Stich

Sonja Stich is a documentary photographer specializing in women, children, and (human) nature. She lives between her home country Germany and her current home in Barcelona, Spain. Sonja's work circles around the human relationship with nature and family.

公公 (Grandpa) - Tiffany Luong

Tiffany Luong is a Los Angeles documentary and commercial/editorial photographer. Her work is the thoughtful internalization of her subjects’ perspectives to reflect back to them the stories they’ll need later. She takes an anthropological participant-observer approach to create storytelling photographs that feel alive.

Tiffany’s start with photography began during her rite of passage backpacking through China when her now-husband gave her an engagement ring and a DSLR. Tiffany has photographed over 350 families and has been ranked in the international Top 100 Family Photographers by the Family Photojournalist Association for 3 years in a row and in the top 10 in the United States by This is Reportage: Family. Although her artwork does not don any prestigious institutions, it graces the walls and shelves of many families’ homes, which mean more to her than anything. She currently lives in Alhambra with her husband, 6-year-old son, and 2-year-old daughter in a tiny (498 sq ft!) home.

Friend of the asylum seekers - Pamela Anticole

Pamela’s career began in street photography, leading her to a stint in journalism at a local Pittsburgh newspaper before dedicating herself to documentary wedding photography. In her personal work, she uses photography as a meditative tool, exploring quiet topics that afford her thought space while leading her to novel experiences of her suburban environment. She strives to see the mundane uncommonly.

Pamela is committed to empowering suppressed voices with story and handing women photographic tools to journal their own lives. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA with her partner and 4 strong-minded, wildly independent children.

Bedtime. - Jess Cheetham

Jess Cheetham is a photographer from Bath, UK. She specialises in documentary family, portraiture and fine art photography.

Jess loves documenting life, in all its gritty, raw, struggling beauty. She finds inspiration in the perceived mundanity of daily domestic life. She is drawn to moments of connection, physical touch and expressions within the routines of home.

Jess has formal fine art training from Edinburgh College of Art and photographic training from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).

Hide and Seek - Joosje Janssen

Joosje Janssen (41 y/o) is a documentary photographer from the Netherlands. A few years ago documentary photography stole her heart. For Joosje photography is at its best when it tells a story and shows life as it is: unpolished, realistic and above all not posed! Every family, every person and every situation is unique and the challenge is to capture that uniqueness in a beautiful way.

Gloves - Diana Hagues

Diana Hagues is a Chinese British photographer based in Cambridge, U.K, specialising in documentary and fine art photography. Her work focuses on the intimate and candid relationship of families in their everyday life, photographing her subjects in their own homes and taking on client commissions.

Through her storytelling photographs, Diana captures the detailed intricacies and connections of family life, in which they could see themselves at a moment in time and feel a sense of belonging.

Sisters - Sara Paolucci

Sara Paolucci is a documentary photographer based in Rome, Italy. Born in Rimini, she has a degree in foreign languages and marketing. She first approached photography at the age of 13, playing and discovering the magic of darkroom at school. But it was only after having her first child that she decided to fully invest and pursue a career in photography. Confronting and studying with very well known and established photographers from all over the world, her work now focuses mainly on family and childhood matters and the importance of leaving visual legacies to different families, including her own.

 

Can’t take him anywhere - Svatka Schneider

Svatka Schneider, a Colorado based European is a self taught photographer and a consistent procrastinator.

Despite being a slow learner she quickly discovered, with special thanks to her three young sons, that the only way to stage life for a photograph is not staging anything at all.

Svatka is passionate about eating fresh bread with butter, drinking beers with friends, smelling rain and freshly cut grass, walking barefoot and people watching from cafes.

Last Chapter of Life - Bennie Weeks

Bennie Weeks lives in Gig Harbor, Washington, USA

A self-taught photographer, Bennie has been inspired by and participated in workshops presented by photographers Kirsten Lewis Bethmann, Nienke Koedijk and Zalmy Berkowitz. Bennie's recent documentary work reflects the acceptance of letting go and spunky personality of her 98 year old mother. 

Beyond the dirty glass - Jessica Hubbard

Jessica is a documentary family photographer based out of Chesapeake, Virginia. She is a wife and mother of three. Her photographs often revolve around the real, everyday stories of her family and the nostalgia of childhood. She enjoys being outdoors in nature, gardening, reading, and adventuring with her family- camera always in hand.

The Matriarch - Mark Looney

Mark Looney is a documentary family and wedding photographer in Ames, Iowa (USA) where he runs Munn Woods Studios. 

A recovering academic, he spent almost two decades analyzing cultural artifacts and disrupting false assumptions about them. Mark now uses those skills to show and redefine what family and love are actually about. 

He might also still be trying to justify all that time in the library. 

Most Saturdays you’ll find him making American pancakes to his Italian-speaking kiddos who have the superpower of simultaneously melting his heart and frying his brain.

Happiest of Birthdays - Stephana Ferrell

Stephana Ferrell started her professional photography career in 2006 as an Orlando wedding photographer, specializing in South Asian weddings. She continued with that specialty for almost 15 years.

In 2017 she started to explore the realm of family photography with a focus on storytelling and real moments, thus separating herself from the large pool of lifestyle photographers in her area. By the end of that year, she found her way to the documentary family photography community. In 2019 she participated in a group mentorship program with Kirsten Lewis while also planning her departure from the wedding business.

2020 was the first year in almost a decade she was the sole owner of a photography business, The Inspired Storytellers. She spent her time during the pandemic exploring her voice as an independent artist and working on a number of personal projects. To date, her work has been on exhibit in Texas, multiple cities in Florida, and now this virtual exhibit.

Untitled - Polina Subbotina

Polina is a proud mother of two lovely daughters. She was born in Germany and has strong Russian roots. She lived and worked in Moscow, Berlin, and Leipzig before finally moving to Hamburg with her husband. Polina worked in app and website design before following her true passion and starting her own business.

With heart and mind, she is working as a photographer. Her work is based on the idea of capturing the precious moments of our lives. She loves to find the hidden beauty, the magic of the moment, and the happiness of the people she photographs.
Polina draws her inspiration from working with children. The way they live in the moment, speak their minds, how they bring us back down to earth, and push our creativity at the same time.

Another aspect of her work is the theme of transience. For her, every day is unique and irretrievable. She sees her task in immortalizing the moment by capturing it in a way that is true to life.

Summer - Cheryl Autry

Cheryl Autry is a documentary family and fine art photographer located in Pasadena, California. She received her first camera from her grandfather at an early age and it became a constant by her side as she captured her daily life. Losing her mom sparked a desire to turn her photography towards families. 

Inspired by street photography and a love for storytelling, Cheryl is deeply connected to the power photography has to elicit emotion from the viewer.

Her documentary approach lends freedom to her intuitive ability to create honest and artful images, in both her family and personal work. Honored to have the trust of families, she melts into their space observing and capturing their unique stories.

Sylvie by the window - Karyn Novakowski

Karyn uses a documentary approach and intentional portraiture to tell introspective stories of her children and extended family members. She brings compassion, curiosity, and a sense of humor to her images as she documents children honestly, in their joy, awkwardness, inquisitiveness, and boredom. Rather than being timeless, Karyn’s images are contemporary. Grounding her subjects in time and space, she captures present day surroundings and happenings along with the ephemeral nature of childhood.

It wasn’t until college that Karyn became interested in photography. At that time landscapes were her focus. She and her friends would grab their cameras and drive for hours in Pennsylvania Amish country in the hopes of stumbling across a covered bridge or an historic barn to use as the backdrop for a portrait. Abandoned farm equipment, a horse drawn buggy, and clothes drying on the clothesline were favorite subjects. During this time, she also developed an interest in aerial photographs which became part of her undergraduate and graduate research in geology. In 2016, when Karyn was pregnant with her second child she started taking online photography classes targeted at moms. She spent the majority of her maternity leave photographing her newborn, carrying him around the house to different types of light and settings.

Karyn has been included in exhibitions at the Dallas Center for Photography, International Center for Photography, and Curated Fridge. She has been published in Shots Magazine and has received awards from the Documentary Family Awards and National Association of Professional Childhood Photographers. She was a participant in the Atelier 33 class at the Griffin Museum of Photography.

Saying Goodbye - Michelle Macirella

Michelle Macirella is a Documentary Family Photographer based in Rochester, New York where she lives with her husband and their adorable dog, Bear. Michelle has always been captivated by the beauty of real life and loves telling stories through her images. She started her business, Luminaria Photography in 2009, and she specializes in creatively documenting the lives of families and pets. Michelle was also the Photo Editor and a photographer for Pup Culture Magazine from 2011-2013, and she has been the Staff Photographer for Lake Affect Magazine since 2012. Her work has been exhibited in several local galleries, and recently, she was a finalist in the Fall 2020 Documentary Family Awards. Currently, she is working on a personal project documenting life during the pandemic.