Compass

“You were put on this earth to achieve your greatest self, to live out your purpose, and to do it fearlessly”

I have an inner, consuming desire to capture the poetry of this earth with all that it holds. I have had the freedom and opportunity to wander, capturing different people and lands. The smallest places interest me, and the largest ones shake me. The compass in my soul points to a direction and desire to never stop experiencing this life with a camera in hand. Not one day is shed in carelessness. I always remember my teenage self ripping out editorials and writing down agency emails with a dream. I looked at myself in a hotel mirror in Moab today and saw a 22 year old girl with a blushed face, overwhelmed heart and a person who is living her dream. My mother told me if I allow myself to be grateful, then I will achieve great things. 

Sometimes I lay in bed sleepless wondering of all of the people I have looked at in my life but never really saw, and how many of them had the same dream or saw mine. Sylvia Plath never wrote it better, "I want to talk to everybody as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night." Everything in life is writable if you have the willpower to experience what you write, first with an imagination to dream up. Write your goals somewhere. If they aren't a fixed vision to look at daily then they are just wishes roaming loudly in your mind. Sometimes these goals break us from an overwhelming fear woven around self-doubt. It is a good thing to have a broken heart, though. It means that at some point in your life you gave your all for something. Some of us believe in an infinite power of love; the kind of true love that can endure any hardship or reach across miles of distance. That kind of love is hidden in the earth like a treasure. Find this love in a person, your faith, or in a passionate ambition. Just find this love in life. 

"Every traveler has a home of his own and learns to appreciate it more from his wandering." The past 3 years I have found myself on multiple airplanes to long anticipated photo shoots, jammed in tour vans with musicians who too had vibrant dreams, long car drives in the Tennessee mountains at midnight while clutched around my lovers arm, swimming in rural streams, and the certainty of eventually returning back to my feathered bed as well as hugging my family again.

I'm happy with where my life has brought me, and I cannot wait to see what is to come.

 

In The Studio With Anberlin : The Making Of Vital

Working with Anberlin was one of the greatest opportunities in my years of being a photographer. Documenting the making of their new album,Vital, through images brought joy just seeing such a close knit band of people who can create so well together and have held together as a band for many years. More bands should use them as an example of what making music should be and the heart of creating it for the right reasons. I'm just thankful I got to capture them as they are and be a part of Vital.

an Instagram photo of a collage I put together of the pages featuring my work used in the new album, besides the cover photographed by Aaron Feaver

 This is the trailer to the album's exclusive dvd "Pretend To Be Friends." It covers days in the making of Vital along with parts from the photo shoot in Nashville, TN. (I didn't film this)

    www.anberlin.com