Invite Wonder | Olympia, WA Family Photographer

What if you bowed before every dandelion you met and wrote love letters to squirrels and pigeons who crossed your path?

What if scrubbing the dishes became an act of single reverence for the gift of being washed clean, and what if the rhythmic percussion of chopping carrots became the drumbeat of your dance?

What if you stepped into the shower each morning only to be baptized anew and sent forth to serve the grocery store bagger, the bank teller, and the bus driver through simple kindness?

And what if the things that make your heart dizzy with delight were no longer stuffed into the basement of your being and allowed out to play in the lush green fields?

There are two ways to live in this world:

As if everything were enchanted or nothing at all…

-Christine Valters Paintner

A few accomplished goals from this year:

My vegetarian cookbook was completed! Plants on the Table can be ordered HERE .

I took this color theory class with the hopes of having complete control over my art. I saw a huge growth in my editing after completing the course and the way I see color will never be the same.

I had the opportunity to teach at Click Away and watched my comfort zone stretch.

100 Days of Summer was my shooting project during the warmer months.

Hold Close, Set Free is a very personal project of self portraits with my children that began in January of this year. My goal was to make 52 images and I almost made it to that number. I plan to put another blog post together with some of my favorites from the ongoing series.

Onward:

I’ve been poring over my work for the past few weeks and looking at each image. What is it about the ones that pull me in? As I step back into the groove of shooting daily, working on my third 365 project, I aspire to move in a certain direction. To think less and feel more, so that I might forget what I’ve made. To take what I’m given and move on. Because as I study every picture from this year, the less remembered are what now lure me. They’re the images that I don’t clearly remember making because I was simply observing and living the moment without interfering.

Some documentary photographs from this enchanted life…