Our story begins a long long time ago, in a world before Facebook, iPhones and blogging.
The year was 2004 and I was fifteen years old. It was a blustery Summer afternoon and I remember listening to the wind chimes outside my open window while browsing through photographs online.
That was the day I found
deviantart.com
I approached my mom that very day and told her, "Mom, I'm going to be a photographer."
After finding a great love not only in photography, but also within photoshop, I began obsessively taking photos and working through online tutorials, teaching myself everything I could and learning more and more about my niche.
My dad, the incredibly encouraging and supportive man he was, helped me find a job with one of our local newspapers photographing and writing articles about the local hockey games. This was also my first introduction to DSLR cameras.
Fast forward to high school graduation, I knew I didn't have any interest in going to university. I wanted to travel!
So I went straight to work full time as a manufacturing technician for a company building solar powered components for compressors in the oil and gas industry. Far from working my dream job right? Don't worry it's all part of the story.
A year later I had taken two amazing trips to Peru and to Ireland, leaving me with a serious travel bug and knowing I had to experience more. Skip ahead one more year and I decided to take a distance education diploma course through the Photography Institute of Vancouver while traveling around Australia. I packed my backpack and left the country for a then undetermined amount of time, hauling along with me my laptop and camera bag.
Glazing over the many wild adventures and the serious love story that led to my marrying Danny, I arrived home in Canada just shy of a year later. Now a worldly yogi traveller and feeling much more schooled in the nitty gritty of photography, I had to choose my next path in life. First order of business? Make my broke ass some money!
Once again encouraged by my dad, I decided to become an EMR (emergency medical responder) working with a safety company. I knew it wasn't what I wanted to do with my life but I knew I needed money if I wanted to continue traveling and pursueing my passions.
Skip ahead another year and I found myself traveling to Mexico to take my 200 hour Yoga Teacher Certification. It was all part of the plan! I was going to be a yogi photographer!
By 2012 I had built a healthy client base with photography and grown into a confident yoga teacher. I took the risk and the opportunity to quit my day job as an EMR/administrator and officially start my own photography business and teach yoga full time at my favorite local studio.
And I'm so happy I did.
Everything that's happened in between telling my mother I wanted to become a photographer and owning my own successful business has been an intricate web of chapters in my life with many different paths crossed and tons of crazy adventures.
I'm a big believer in all things happening for a reason and there being no such thing as coincidences. I may not have known this was the path I was working towards when I first found photography as a hobby, but every single choice I made led me to this life.
And you know what, I wouldn't change a thing.
