Maria and Clay were married at one of Wisconsin’s most beautiful locations. Inside and outside — it all looked perfect. But you could have stripped all the pretty “things” away and this wedding still would have been so beautiful. Maria and Clay are a million shades of fun, super laid-back, caring, sweet, kind and smart. They have a remarkable love for each other and they were surrounded by more love than I could almost handle on their wedding day.

Filled with Swedish tradition (cannons firing, singing, dancing, table-pounding), this wedding was one of a kind. It’s one of those weddings, that as a photographer, you want to shoot over and over again.

Thank you so so much, Maria and Clay. It was truly an honor to be part of your day.  See you in a week for your engagement-turned-day-after-session :)

“We can’t be anything we want to be. We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who we are from the cradle, and we’re stuck with it. Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.” — Steven Pressfield, from The War of Art

For too long I chased everyone else’s dreams for me. Now that I’m living my own dream, I know it’s how I can best serve others. When I talk about the choice I made to leave my old job I am not criticizing that profession or the people in it. I am criticizing the idea of me being in that profession when it wasn’t my personal destiny (I realize this sounds new-agey; sorry). There are people in my life who can’t accept that I “threw away” a Masters degree to pursue something less conventional. They’ll probably never tell me they’re proud of me, but that’s fine. What they don’t understand is that being a photographer is my best contribution to the world.

This past week I attended the funeral of my 28 year old cousin. Seeing your 27 year old brother as a pallbearer in his best friend’s funeral will shake you. It did me. It’s the 5th funeral since 1999 that I’ve attended for someone under the age of 30. I say that not for you to feel bad for me, but to demonstrate the fragility of life. It’s not rare to leave this earth at a young age. Every single day I wake up and know I made the right decision to leave a good-fit job for a perfect-fit job as a photographer. I’ve attended more funerals for young people than for old people. I don’t care if you think it sounds cliche, I’m pretty much begging you to live the best story for yourself that you can. I know that I can personally do better yet, on a day to day basis. Spend more time with friends than alone inside … really put all my creative shoot ideas into practice … take more trips.

“Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.” — Pressfield