…Comes from some other beginning’s end
This is a year of big beginnings and big endings for me, and I have so many feelings about it that it’s hard to hold them all. While the nation may be in a state of turmoil (okay, there’s no maybe about it), my personal life is currently going about as well as maybe it ever has. This year is shaping up to be my best photography year ever, despite being only 4 months in. I’ve seen big growth in my boudoir + empowerment brand, Reverence Intimate Portraits. I hosted my first ever Queer Body Image Bootcamp (also under the Reverence Intimate Portraits brand). I had my work up in the Art + Lit Lab (a Madison-based art gallery) and did my first ever artist talkback event with my friend and creative collaborator, Sami Schalk. It’s been a year of personal and professional growth like I’ve never seen, and that’s led me to make the exciting (and sort of terrifying) leap of quitting my day job (after 23 years of doing both day job and photography) to focus my time and energy entirely on photography and body image education!
If I’m being honest, I never thought this would be possible. I don’t mean that in a particularly pessimistic way, it’s just that I’m a realist and up until relatively recently, I hadn’t seen any evidence that such a thing was eventually going to come to fruition. I thought I’d continue to hold down a day job as a Product Manager and do photography until my body gave out and I had to give up photography, or until I retired from both things. So the deep joy and gratitude I’m feeling right now about this new beginning is overwhelming.
It’s bittersweet though. In early 2024, I made a decision to change day job companies after being with my last company for 10+ years, and as anyone who knows me will tell you, that was a scary move in and of itself, and now here I am, just over a year later, making an even bigger leap. I love the folks I work with at the new company, I just can’t keep doing both because my body won’t stand for it anymore. So as I say goodbye to one wonderful opportunity, and the end of an era, I’m saying hello to this big and bold new beginning.
To commemorate the decision to go full-time with photography this year, I got a new tattoo from the best tattoo artist a girl could ask for, Mar Gosselaar! I talked with them about my vision, which was a half sleeve inspired by The Empress tarot archetype (which symbolizes abundance, creativity, intuition, and growth) and they fully brought that vision to life. The Empress seems like the perfect representation of what I’m calling into my life this year, and where I want my path pointed. We’re still working on the color, and that’s fitting because this new beginning is still a work in progress, as am I.
I am filled with gratitude for all of our clients, and the folks who have been so supportive of us over the years. I cannot wait to be able to serve our community even more, and thank you thank you thank you for making this possible!
—Sam