Lets get this blog thing started, Sioux Falls!

Hello and welcome to my blog!  Just thought I'd give you a little bit of info about me and about this blog.  Obviously, I am a photographer, but I wear many other hats as well.  I am a wife and a mother.  I am a writer and avid reader.  I am an explorer and world traveler.  I am a teacher and a learner. 

I'll start with wife and mother since both are near and dear to my heart.  That is Anthony, my crazy husband of 10 years (yes, he is drinking a beer with his french toast, but in his defense, we were having breakfast for dinner).  We met on a Dance Dance Revolution Machine right here in Sioux Falls while I was home for Christmas from Japan.  A few years later, I came back from Japan and we got married on that very Dance Dance Machine (it was pretty much awesome).

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A mere 7 years later, we had our first son, Oliver (that's him over there to the left).  He is also, in case you are wondering, pretty much awesome (though he has his moments - usually between 8 and 9 pm when he's super tired.  Or right upon waking from an afternoon nap.  Or when he wants something he can't have right now five minutes ago).  

Apparently, we thought we knew what we were doing (ha, the joke was really truly on us) because about two years after Oliver arrived, our second son, Ellery graced us with his incredible, beautiful little presence (that would be him straight down in the middle of the page - the one with the adorable lip sticking out about a mile, a lip that is well used for mega sulking and cuteness fests).   

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Life has been a whirlwind of adventure and learning with these two monkeys and my eccentric professor of a husband, but all three of my boys are the loves of my life and a huge part of the journey I am currently on.  See, I majored in film in college and loved it!  Pretty much all aspects of it.  Except the go and live and eat, breathe and sleep the Hollywood lifestyle.  This just wasn't what I wanted to do.  I wanted to travel, I wanted to tell stories, I wanted to be in smaller towns and I didn't want to do the sort of politicking I felt was probably necessary to be in the film world.  While in school, I took photography and I absolutely fell in love with portraiture.  This didn't really surprise me as I am also a writer and there is something absolutely lovely and incredible about well written and powerful short stories.  This is what I feel a picture is like.  If you do it right, you can capture an entire story in one beautiful, powerful image, like this. 

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So is this what I headed right out to do?  Nope.  I had some life to live first.  I traveled to Ireland where I lived and studied for a year.  I graduated and moved back to Sioux Falls.  I did wedding photography for two years and then got the travel bug again so I headed to Japan where I stayed for two years.  I came back briefly to marry my wonderful husband and then we returned to Japan together for two more years.  When we finally came back to the States, we got jobs and I supported Anthony while he got his Master's.  Then we had a child.  Then we had another one.  Fast forward to now when a good friend of mine mentioned that her husband, who is also a photographer, was selling a camera.  Something just clicked in me when I heard that (no, this is not a cheesy photographer pun - ok, well it might be, but I didn't intend for it to be) and I knew I had to get it.  The rest is history.  And a lot of hard work.  Still Falling Photography was born out of this friend's offhanded comment and I will always be grateful for that.

Ok, so to cut an already long story a tiny bit shorter, I will stop shortly after I say this next bit about how I intend to use this blog.  Obviously, I want to use it to showcase the incredible clients who come to me and trust me to capture their special moments - families, seniors, babies, pregnant women, wedding parties, grandparents and their precious grandbabies.  That said, I also want to use it to highlight some of my passions, including food, local businesses (I plan on doing this through Awesome Local Focals, stories I will feature - with pictures of course - on local places in Sioux Falls  that you might not know you need to know about, but that you absolutely do), and of course, my number one passion, my own lovely family and our crazy fun adventures together.

Thanks for taking time to read this (for those who made it this far) and I hope you have a wonderful snuggly day like these two are having!