MY WHY
When I was sixteen, my dad died suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack.
At first, I had so many things to hold onto. I could still hear his laugh. His voice. The house still felt like him. I had his shirts. His birthday cards. Little random voicemails of him just checking in or saying to call him back. Small, random gifts that didn’t seem meaningful at the time but quickly became my most treasured possessions.
Then we moved. I got a new phone. Backups failed. Voicemails were lost. Things disappeared. The pieces I had of him began to fade one by one. Until all I had left were photographs.
Those photographs did more than remind me what he looked like. They reminded me what it felt like to sit beside him.
To laugh with him.
To be loved by him.
To live in the little, small, mundane moments of a world he was also still a part of.
My parents had the kind of love you’d think only exists in storybooks.
They were best friends. Endlessly in love, always laughing, never fighting (seriously), and totally inseparable.
Every night, they’d sit outside on the patio for hours, just talking. Their marriage had big moments, but it was mostly made up of what could be seen as average or ordinary days. Small moments at family dinners, laughing their heads off. Coming back from the grocery store with little surprises for each other. Reading the newspaper together every morning.
Those small moments were made bigger because of how much they loved each other.
Looking back, that’s where my love for love and the in-between began.
Growing up, I didn’t just dream of my own love story. I was also obsessed with everyone else’s.
I’d ask my friends’ parents how they met. I’d imagine strangers’ weddings for fun. I noticed pinkies linked at coffee counters. Winks exchanged across crowded rooms. A small touch on the small of their partner’s back.
These little rituals that often go unnoticed by others but are everything when you’re the one in them.
I’ve come to believe the small moments are the big ones.
As time moves on, as people pass, and as memories fade, I’ve realized it’s not the grand gestures we miss most.
It’s how someone made us feel when they walked in the room.
It’s the way they could make you laugh when you were sad but were trying to hide it.
It’s how they knew what you needed to hear before you did.
It’s being known in the smallest of ways in the shortest moments that would be overlooked by anyone else.
It’s the way they made you feel in the in-between.
That’s why I love what I do. That’s why I am here.
Not to curate perfection. But to photograph things exactly as they are. To photograph the in between moments that will be the memories you love the most.
I am here to help you hold onto what’s real. What would be overlooked by others. What really matters most to you.
Because at the end of the day, you will want to remember everything exactly as it was. Not the photoshopped, rewritten version, but the real one.
And that will always be my why.
Love,
Kirstin
