This post might border a little more on the personal side but I feel it is essential to know how much I valued Fabian and Mina and the time I spent with them during their photo session. When Mina (who is a talented photographer herself!) had emailed me wanting to book a session for her and her husband I was experiencing a season in my life which I had never experienced or encountered before and consequently, I had a lot of misgivings about finalizing a session for them. Life after loss affects every aspect of your life and I had just begun to discover that when a little more than a year ago my twin sons passed away. Loss shattered my world and shredded away any meaning that it could have for a long stretch of time. It was hard to see the purpose, the beauty, the promise of anything in life when so much was taken away from me. Since the boys passed away, I noticed my levels of creativity (if I can claim to possess any) were nonexistent. I couldn't pick up my camera, nor did I want to. It seemed so very purposeless to attempt to try and even more so when the world was absent of color. I could only see things in sadness and in the darkening light of things I had lost. To attempt to see it otherwise or even pretend otherwise would have taken a superhuman strength that I did not possess. But life doesn’t stop even when you feel it has. And Mina and Fabian were one of the first clients to reach out to me and want to book with me shortly after all that had happened.
Meet Marilys and Dario. They met each other online and set up a date at a Jazz Festival that was happening in town. Marilys was a little suspicious of Dario cause his profile picture was a bit crazy looking and Dario was a bit concerned because she has told him she would be wearing a white dress; but once they both met each other, it was pretty safe to say they were inseparable. By the time of their session they had been together for three years and had just a handful of photos of them together, so they figured they should change that. And so they did.
Phil and Elaine have been in Vienna for a few years now and wanted to get some pictures of themselves in the place that they've now grown to call home. We wandered around Stadtpark in the semi-cool summer weather capturing them in the heart of Vienna. In between shots I got to learn a few interesting things about them. Phil and Elaine actually met on match.com (yay for technology!) and upon meeting knew they had finally found their soul mate. They're an adventurous couple and they had eloped to Vermont to get married in 2009 and a few years later found themselves in Vienna both working at the IAEA, not too far from each other.
I was in desperate need of a couple for a television show and Lauren and Mateusz contacted me immediately and said they were willing to be that couple. So we ran around Schloß Schönbrunn and got a few pictures of them just soaking up each other's presence. It took a minute or so to get comfortable being filmed during our shoot but after a while we didn't even notice them. I found out that they both met at a lake and it was love at first sight. It was also pretty evident that they were smitten with each other, which makes my job so much easier. Photographing people when they're around people they love is the best job ever. I could do it all day.
