Tag Archives: photography

winter solstice

It’s official: winter is here and Christmas is almost upon us! And believe it or not, I’ve watched almost all of my favorite Christmas movies, and I’m done making gifts. Done making gifts before the last hours of Christmas Eve, truly a miracle.

Under our tree is looking full this year, and the tree itself has a total of five strands of Christmas lights wrapped around it. At night it absolutely glows, and Dad has said on multiple occasions that it looks like it belongs in a movie.

I’m working on using every last day to post Christmas content on my YouTube page, because this seasonal aesthetic must be taken full advantage of!

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bird merch (launch day)

Exciting news: I’ve partnered up with Riley Mae and Mom to design some bird merch for Riley Mae’s YouTube channel, and yesterday we official launched it 🎉

I was excited to get to design some simple, straightforward birds that are now being printed on t-shirts, mugs, pins, hats, and more.

All of these designs were drawn directly from some of Riley Mae’s photographs, and then painted with black acrylic paint before I scanned them onto my computer and turned them into transparent PNG files that can easily be uploaded to all of our projects.

carolina wren, ruby-throated hummingbird, sanderling, blue jay, northern cardinal, northern flicker, turkey vulture

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halloween 2025

Halloween…?

Ahh yes, the holiday that people try to tell me I must celebrate before I’m allowed to put up my Christmas lights.

What a ridiculous notion 🤭

the true Halloween magic is that my camera placement was so perfect that you cannot see the piles of junk just over the stonewall in the neighbors’ yard *chef’s kiss*

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october (and a cautionary tale)

Usually while I eat breakfast I like to scroll through the daily news articles, because there’s always something interesting mixed into the boring stuff. A new fossil discovered? An octopus that’s been recorded punching fish? Red carpet photos from an award show that I didn’t know was going on? All good things to read, look at, watch, and (when it comes to fashion) judge while I eat my homemade sourdough bread, and start my day.

But lately almost every article has been political, with a certain orange-faced idiot and his moronic toadies plastered across all the news story.

As expected, it’s all been not only depressing and scary (exciting news: it’s almost time to try to enroll in healthcare that I’ll probably be denied! 🥂), it’s also been so blatantly and disgustingly hypocritical that it just about makes my blood boil.

As you can imagine: not a great way to start my day. So I decided to take a little break from the daily onslaught of terrible news, and take that time to get back to my Pinterest scrolling instead. After all, tis the season for new inspiration and creativity 🍂

No one can stop me from getting excited about making Christmas ornaments.

my Pinterest feed has been full of vintage-autumn photography vibes, and when I saw the yellow maple leaves falling, I knew I had to get out for a morning photoshoot

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vacation 2025

I was preparing for this vacation with more than just a little trepidation, because, if I’m being quite honest, I didn’t enjoy last year’s vacation much at all (you can see some photos from it in this post, but I never went into great detail about any of it).

Which really sucked, because everyone else had a grand ol’ time.

I finally finished sifting through my billions of video clips (it was too much, I know); you can check out my collection of vacation Shorts here!

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raising monarch butterflies

I decided to single-handedly save the monarch population in a single season; you can now refer to me as Monarch Mommy™

This, of course, is a joke (the saving the species part, not the Monarch Mommy™ part), and since raising monarchs indoors can be quite a hot top on the internet (who knew, right?), I’m going to start this post with a clear disclaimer: apparently it’s not been proven that indoor rearing of monarchs has done much — if anything — to help the general monarch population.

Some studies say that, if done improperly, the indoor raising of monarch butterflies can actually have an adverse effect on the general monarch population.

*steps onto my soapbox*

Let me just say that I completely agree with some reasonings (like it can make spreading disease easier), while other reasonings I completely disagree with. For instance, believing that nature successfully “picks off the weak” and that we’re interfering with that process by protecting them?? Um, here’s my hot take: having a wasp lay eggs in a caterpillar doesn’t mean that a caterpillar is weak, it just means that it was one unlucky little dude who now has to endure a horrific death!

I believe that my butterflies were part of the migratory generation (also known as the “super generation”), and they were much larger than other monarchs that I’ve seen around

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jubilant sun

the sun peeks over the horizon,

golden beams winding through branches,

dappling the sleeping plants in glory.

dew drops rest on stems,

held captive in the hair of the plant,

shimmering and glinting,

like pearls ‘round a rich woman’s neck,

everyday magic so easily overlooked.

they stretch and reach their arms to the sky,

elegant smiles on their concealed faces,

coaxed back to life by a jubilant sun.

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the seaside

The fam and I returned from our 6 days of seaside vacationing on Tuesday, and ever since then I’ve been sifting through hundreds of videos and compiling them into aesthetic YouTube shorts (these are pretty much purely for my and my family’s entertainment, but there’s a slight chance that somebody else might enjoy them too).

I was originally throwing around the idea of making a longform video about the trip, but after spending the whole first day of the vacation capturing aesthetically-pleasing footage (think: sanderlings running along the surf in front of a pastel-pink sunset), my camera decided to throw a fit, mess with my SD card, and ultimately lose my gorgeous footage.

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a girl and her bug collection

When I first started pinning butterflies in June (you can see my how to pin butterflies post here), I was well-aware that this was going to be a slow-going hobby for me. I only ever pin bugs that have been found dead, and I think we all know how rare it is to find a beautiful dead butterfly in the wild.

All the Redditors can defend their bug-catching methods all they want, but I’ll never be okay with catching and killing a bug for the sole purpose of owning its beauty. Imagine you’re enjoying your life one day, out in the big wide world, and a giant alien sees you, thinks you’re pretty, scoops you up, and sticks you in their freezer, just so that they can pin you in a box.

Y’all, that’s insane, and there’s not one ounce of me that approves of that selfish barbarianism ☝🏼🤨

the colors and pattern on the Ornate Tiger moth’s wings (bottom left) are pretty crazy

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last days of summer

Officially into the 9th month of the year (in case you missed my 60-second August wrap, you can watch it here), and my Christmas senses are tingling, people. The lights want to be hung! The lists want to be made!!

But summer isn’t quite over yet, and I’m making the most of the last days of it.

_{(Christmas lights will be being hung within the next month)}