The Seashore & Aldersgate Portrait Projects: Why I Keep Coming Back, Year After Year

Every spring, I pick up my camera and head to a place that has shaped my family in more ways than I can count: Aldersgate Day School nestled in Fort Hunt, where my boys spent some of their earliest, happiest years. This year marks our Sixth Annual Aldersgate Portrait Project and years of capturing genuine, full-hearted smiles from the kids in our community, and giving back to the school that gave so much to mine.

It's hard to put into words what this project means to me. When I see kids who recognize me from the year before, who walk into the session a little taller than they did last spring, a little more confident, a little more themselves, my heart skips a beat!  I get to watch them grow up frame by frame. And they are so happy to see me!  I feel so fortunate that their parents who also become friends, trust me to capture this beautiful season of their child's life, which is one of the greatest gifts of my profession…or should I say passion…

The Aldersgate Portrait Project is actually the second chapter of a story that started years earlier in Corpus Christi, Texas when we moved from Virginia to South Texas for my husband’s career in the Navy.  This year, we celebrated the 12th annual Seashore Portrait Project, and over those twelve years we've raised more than $125,500 for the Seashore Charter Schools in the community we called home for three years…and always feels like coming home when I go back to visit every year.  Isn’t that a gift…moving from one place that you love to another you see other people loving?  Our little island is a place that thrives on family, faith, and the kind of village it takes to raise a child, and it gave our children so much that it was a gift to find a way to keep giving back, even from afar.

A piece of both projects that's especially close to my heart is the support they offer to military families. As a photographer who has spent years working in communities full of military children, I've seen how often these sweet, resilient little ones move from base to base, school to school, neighborhood to neighborhood. They make new friends, learn new routines, and find their footing again and again.  Creating places where military (and all children) feel seen, known, and celebrated is so wonderful. Funding schools that welcome these children, and capturing portraits that let their families hold on to a moment in a beautiful way..

When we moved to the Fort Hunt area and my youngest started at Aldersgate, I felt that same pull all over again — the desire to give back to a community that had wrapped its arms around our family. So we launched the Aldersgate Portrait Project, and six years later, I'm still amazed by what this little tradition has become – $5,300 raised just this year, and a total of $21,300 in 6 years.

I am always so grateful for the volunteers who show up year after year, the families who sign up for sessions, and the schools that trust us with their sweet children. And I always finish these Portrait Projects with a fuller heart.  

Thank you for trusting me to capture your children…truly, these communities are the reason for all of this…here's to many more years of smiles, both in Texas and right here in our very own backyard.

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