Brisk winter air and sun rays of warmth highlight the skin of my good friend Taylor as we embrace our Sedona film journey. If you've ever experienced Sedona Arizona first hand, you may know the exact air I am talking about. It is so pure, as if you were drinking the finest mineral spring water through your skin. True nourishment for the soul.

I have a fascination with derelict houses; places that were once homes but have long been left to decay. I began photographing a place I have named Forlorn House in 2019. My goal was to capture ita fading beauty in each of the four seasons. I was pleased to get an excellent shot in the fall of 2019. The winter of 2019-20 was warmer than usual. When there was light snow, I decided to wait for a better winter shot. To my utter disappointment, it did not snow again that winter. So, when I awoke in January of 2020 , to find it snowing hard, I decided to venture forth lest I miss another winter without a good shot.

It was a hot day in July and we had all gone to swim at friends pool. I am the proud Grandmother of three beautiful Grandkids. Two boys and one girl ages anywhere from ten to four years old at the time. The kids had been swimming but my four year old Grandson had fallen asleep. When he woke he was grumpy not wanting to do anything but fuss because of heat. Everyone was trying to get him in a better mood but he storms off a few feet from us. We all I started to do our own thing some swim so I'm eating some drinking just having fun. We saw the youngest grandson pick something up off the hot cement. It's like he stopped in amazement at what he found. It was a dragonfly and he was not moving. We can ask him just to put it down because it was dead he's in a go about his business back but he refused. He began to blow air onto the dragonfly with no response of course. That we tried is making a no go play and he refused totally refused hey Steph I will bring the dragonfly back to life. Of course we didn't want his feelings to get hurt and be disappointed so we tried to encourage him to to put it down and just keep going. This four-year-old wouldn't have no part of it. He went to the shade and continue to blow like he was breathing like back into it. Five maybe 10 minutes went by he still completely refused to stop. Hello Voice if they were that dragonfly and then all of a sudden it's wings flutter. He began to cry with happiness. See I told you he said see I told you that and dead. Still we were thinking there's no way that dragonfly is alive. If that little four-year-old continue to insist that it was alive. He probably said that another five minutes or so with no encouragement from us and all of a sudden a dragonfly begin to flow to his wings and flew away and total amazement. We were all completely shocked that this little boy spent that much time basically resuscitate that dragonfly because he said he knew he was not dead. That day that little boy told us I will listen don't give up on something you love that is beautiful because it might not be dead.

Once I'd seen the Mobile Moments challenge and read the brief, I knew exactly what it was that I would capture. I picked up my iPhone, threw on my boots and made the 10-minute walk from my house to a street I've walked down hundreds of times since moving into the area in 2014.

On an abnormally warm January afternoon I joined three friends for for a 20ish mile bicycle ride. The previous five days had been cold and rainy and I was craving an excuse to get outside. I was also looking forward to get back on my bicycle. As a previous competitive cyclist, I deeply missed the time I used to spend on my bike. Not the long training rides, just the comraderie of friends enjoying time together. As a parent with a young child I almost never have the opportunity to take off on my own any longer. These rare moments are cherished even more.

The image above represents the beginning of my career as a photographer. It was 2016 i was still in high school thinking of what i was going to do after i graduated. I was always been very fond of photography, i loved seeing everyones amazing images but i could never see myself doing it as something that could possibly be a career.

I took this photo on my iPhone using High Def. Resolution and a dramatic cool filter. The photo I took is a special moment I caught of my best friend showing her loving feelings for her husband in their favorite place, the Chicago Botanical Gardens. We were there so I could take photos of their one-year anniversary together. We had arrived on a rain day, which was perfect because there were fewer people there. As we were walking through the Botanical Gardens my friend requested to stop for a moment to admire the small lake in the gardens and to catch our breaths because of how large the botanicals were. I said yes and began to sit down and admire the view while my friend and her husband decided to walk onto the bridge and admire the surrounding areas around the lake. When I saw them on the bridge I decided to pull out my camera and get a couple of quick shots before they changed clothes and begin the actual shoot. They noticed what I was doing but paid no mind and continued looking around and feeling total bliss from their surroundings. I put my camera down after a while and pulled out my phone to send a text message to my boyfriend about how beautiful it was out here when I noticed them begin walking towards me but stopped. I knew I needed to switch over to my phone’s camera quick. As soon as I did I was able to take a photo of my friend kissing her husband without prompt or guide or their knowledge of what had just happened. They had thought I had stopped taking photos of them and that I wouldn’t use my cell phone to take the photo. I also didn’t realize that when I took the photo so quickly that I was using the dramatic cool filter, which added to the beauty of this photo. After that I had them change their clothes and I took photos of the two together in the rose gardens, then in the tropical, and a few other locations. After the shoot I went straight home and began editing all of their photos, except for the one on my phone. That one I left as it was because I couldn’t help but admire the beauty of how much she loved her husband and how much he loved her. That photo made me realize love is a sweet moment that most people take for granted while others try to show it as much as they can. After I finished editing all of the photos I messaged my friend saying that I was ready to show her and her husband their photos and scheduled a quick meet up spot. As we were going through the photos and remembering the moment I was holding back the joy of presenting this photo to her because I at first only provided the ones that were on my camera. As she saw the last photo she began telling me how wonderful the photos were and how much she appreciated them. At that moment I told her I appreciated the compliments but that there was still one last photo I had to show her. She was confused by what I had said and I told her to hang on one moment. I pulled out my cell phone and sent her a text of the photo. The moment she saw the photo, she began to tear up and thanked me even more. She told me this is a photo she always dreamed of, a photo that truly caught her love for her husband. I said thank you and after a few more words we parted ways but none of us will forget the beauty this photo has caught.

I took this picture a couple of months ago, around Christmas in my dormitory. I had done my makeup, dressed rather nicely for a weekday, and had actually tried to tame my wild afro but I had absolutely nowhere to go. I sat in my room, working on this and that until I stood up and looked out the window. It was a regular day, students milling to and fro, not yet the time for evening activities but too late in the day to have any more classes. I don’t exactly remember the song that I was listening to, but I remember feeling the acute sense of nothingness. Looking out the window, I didn’t feel peace or contentedness, happiness or even sadness. I remember feeling out of place, without context, like I was floating in an endless sea of space. My phone snapped me out of my weird reverie, and after finishing my homework, I returned to the same place I had been just moments ago. Even after standing in the same place, and staring at the same place, I couldn’t bring back the same feeling, and for whatever reason it saddened me. So, I decided I would take a picture, to help distract me, because I knew that today I looked good. I stood at the window for over five minutes, constantly changing positions and postures. I had the camera on a self -timer, and I remember counting the seconds until the shutter clicked. I had the pose just right, the perfect frame and lighting, but I couldn’t re-create the face that I knew I was feeling inside. I changed the self-timer from the standard three seconds to ten seconds, but as I clicked the camera button, I lost track of the time, and then all of a sudden, I was back to that space miles away. A mere second may have gone by but in my shoes, you would have felt what you can only imagine to be the weight of the world, transferred to your shoulders from mine. Click! The shutter went off, the speed of the sound pulling me faster than I could have imagined out of the state I was in. I blinked a few times, and then looked at my phone. My first instinct was to delete it, my fingers were mere centimeters from the screen, ready to hit the retake button, but something in me decided to wait. So instead, I saved it. I continued for another five or so minutes taking pictures, but I knew in my heart I knew that none of them would work because I had already found the one; I just didn’t want to believe it. I dutifully edited it, using the warm tones of the room and highlighted my skin to glowing perfection, but it didn’t change the face. I posted it to Instagram and received many compliments and words of affirmation, but I didn’t read anything that I wanted to see. I showed a few select people in my everyday life here at college, they all admired it and praised it but again, not what I wanted to hear. Still to this day, looking at this picture only serves to give me mixed emotions. As an artist, I am proud of what I accomplished, but as the model I am scared by what I pulled out of myself. Because of the position the photo was taken, I’m not really sure if I’m smiling. If taken as a regular point and shoot frame, would it have been a different look? One that show relaxed but non-smiling lips, or would it have reflected the same hint of happiness I vaguely detect? Is the arm crossed in the manner of nonchalant or one marked by years of self-defensiveness? Or even worse, is it a self-hug stemmed from years of loneliness caused only by the misfortunes of one’s past mistakes. Do the eyes shine like glass from unshed tears, or are they just reflections of her fears in the past coming to haunt her in the future? I call this look a whisp, because it is the most delicate look that has ever surfaced on my face from graves, I buried deep. If it was but a famous picture like the Mona Lisa, I would ponder upon these thoughts and search for a conclusion but since it is about me, I only run from them.

Earlier this week I travelled up the beautiful Northumberland coast for a game of golf, with three good pals, at Alnmouth Golf Club. The course, also known as Foxton, is located on cliffs above Alnmouth Village where there is another golf course by the same name.

There are a few rare places in the world where time as a linear construct just doesn’t seem to make much sense; places where the past, present and even the future seem to be all jumbled together, like pack ice piled up along a shoreline. For me, Yellowstone National Park is of those scarce spots. There is a magic about Yellowstone that comes from the mist of hot bubbling springs and steam-sprouting geysers. In the hills and valleys throughout the park, ghostly sulfur mist rises from soft rock outcroppings and thin, crusty salt surfaces. Boiling brooks below gurgle in the ground. The geysers hiss, whistle, give and moan before erupting.

It’s September, 2019. A storm came upon us as we had driven through Ouray and Silverton, Colorado. We were on our way to Durango to find new lodging after a disappointing surprise for our original lodging. We did find a decent place and stayed for two days.