It all began with a friend request and message on Facebook. Three years ago I received a request along with a message of someone who claimed to be a relative. She turned out to be a cousin on my father's side. I didn’t know many family members from my father's side of the family since he was not in my life growing up.

I grew up with a very large family on my mom's side alone, and my cousins are like my siblings that I didn’t have since I was the only child.

Well, we proceeded to talk and exchange life stories, and connect thru social media since she lives in NY and I in AZ. I learned she had a really rough childhood and her marriage wasn’t any better. She is now a very happy divorced woman learning to love herself as she has always deserved. So she has made it a goal to travel the world and she travels every month and a lot. I mean sometimes she travels even up to 3 times a month.

A year later she traveled to AZ as one of the many trips she does a month. When she came out I met her over dinner and was able to talk more. It was so nice to finally meet her personally and learn more about her.

Well, this year she turns 50 years old and she wanted to do a 50th photoshoot. So she reached out and asked if I would be able to do her photoshoot since she loved my photos and Arizona. I of course accepted and loved the idea. I was so excited I planned out a whole 2 days of fun in Sedona and bought some dresses for her shoot.

Unfortunately, due to the fire season here in Arizona, Sedona and all of up north closed down all trails and national parks 😩. This put a big dent in my plans for her shoot, yet she didn’t let the stormy weather and closures damper on her fun. During our short time together I was able to get to know her more and I found her to be an admirable strong independent woman, who is adventurous, fun, beautiful and despite her really hard life growing up and cool New York attitude she has a huge soft heart.

Well, I can go on forever on how awesome she is so instead I will show you some of her photos from her session. She was nervous about the shoot since she had never had a professional session before, for whatever reason she thinks she is not photogenic! Crazy, I mean for 50 years I think she is beautiful!

Her words when she saw her photos for the first time were “OMG I am in love with myself 😍”

There it is, this is why I love what I do, to help people see how beautiful they are!! To help them see what I see when I look at them thru my lens. Almost every person I have photographed is so nervous because they don’t know what to expect, or they don’t think they are pretty enough to be photographed. When they are able to see themselves thru my eyes I can see their self esteem just grow and I love it.