Happy Lunar New Year! Years ago (as in, seven years ago, at the start of the Year of the Rooster), on a very cold January night, I was on my way from SoHo to Brooklyn to photograph a birthday party…

I’ve known and loved The Bergamot (Jillian Speece and Nathaniel Paul Hoff) for years, and I couldn’t be more proud of their most recent achievement of creating a documentary, State of the Unity, which spent 2023 positively tearing up the film festival circuit and screening all over the country, plus locking in a distribution deal with Freestyle Digital Media…

A one-year dating anniversary is a wonderful time for a session— you’re just far enough along in your relationship that you know it has staying power, but it’s still pretty fresh, too. A one-year dating anniversary session has the potential to become one you’ll look back on for decades to come, remembering early days of your relationship.

This session is proof that engagement is just one reason to hire a professional photographer. Lillie and Caleb received this session with me as a gift from Lillie’s mother as a commemoration of their recent move to New York City. She wanted them to have portraits to remember this time in their lives, and I was touched to be the one chosen to mark the occasion.

Clare is a person for whom creative expression is a non-negotiable part of daily life. It’s not what she does. It’s who she is. So it only makes sense that her engagement party, celebrating her commitment to Chris, would be as expressive as every other part of her life. And what theme could possibly be better than Valentine’s Day? Clare and Chris gathered their New York City community near at Black Rabbit Bar in Greenpoint, where pink and red were de rigueur and love and laughs were plenty.

I once read that a great default question to ask couples you may meet in social situations is how they met. Clare and Chris are a couple who will always have a wonderful story to share. Once upon a time, Clare was a somewhat recent college grad, back in her hometown to see her family and catch up on some appointments. She went to her childhood dentist for checkup and found that she’d been assigned a new practitioner, who she found distractingly handsome and agreeable. She went home, found him on Facebook, messaged him, and… well, it worked out really well. 😉