Mama to two little girls, wife to the most creative guy I’ve ever met, completely invested dog parent; I give my clients the thing I want myself: tangible reminders of the beauty that surrounds us.

This whole thing began because of a dog—the best dog, Roux (pronounced Roo). She was the inspiration for Rouxby (pronounced Ruby—it’s confusing, I know). I bought my first camera because I wanted to take pictures of that puppy before she wasn’t a puppy anymore, and then people started asking me to take pictures of their dogs, and then people whose dogs I’d photographed got married and asked me to take those pictures, too, and those people had children and asked me to photograph their families. Like all of the best things, Rouxby the business happened organically. It didn’t start with a business plan, or an Instagram account (which had not even been invented yet), it started with what is still at the heart of every photograph I take: the desire to hold tight to the best parts of our constantly-changing lives.

Roux will turn fourteen this summer, which means this business is nearly as old. That dog, and this career, have taken me through a nomadic existence (Roux and I once spent three months on the road with my best friend and her dog – we called ourselves the Four Crazy Bitches, spent less than $5/day on food and all four slept on air mattress in the back of my friend’s Toyota Highlander), meeting my now-husband, our wedding, a move to the Midwest, ping-ponging from Colorado to Ohio and back again (and again, and again), the birth of one baby, and then another, and—finally, a move back to Colorado, to property on the high plains with big dreams and bigger skies.

I’ve been doing this long enough, and lived enough years, to have a very specific approach to the work I do. Whether I’m photographing a wedding, a birth, a dog portrait session, brand work—anything, really, the bottom line is the same: the magic that exists in that moment with you cannot be recreated. I won’t Photoshop out your double chin (one of these days I’m going to write an ode to a mother’s double chin; I catch them allll the time, and it’s because moms are so often looking adoringly at a child who is very close to her face, and the look on her face is often pure delight, and I don’t give a shit if you have a double chin and it’s not the face you make when you pose for a selfie, because to me that double chin is pure beauty). I structure newborn + family sessions in a very particular way to make the session feel like a true escape from your day-to-day; I want it to be a really unique time to soak up your family, and not a harried attempt to get a photo of four people in coordinating sweaters smiling at the camera. That doesn’t mean there won’t be smiles, but I won’t ask a small child to smile for the sake of smiling because I think that’s kind of messed up, and those aren’t the photos you’ll want anyway. A true smile, yours and theirs, is what you’ll want to remember (as early as next week when they’ve already changed—gosh, that happens fast).

I don’t take my job for granted. Every single session gets me in the gut. I’m an observer by nature, empathetic to a fault. I’m often tearing up behind the lens, and it took until my mid-thirties to realize that isn’t a bad thing. I’m eager to show you your images even as I’m shooting them, because there in the moment with you I’m seeing what makes you and your family and your dog and your partner beautiful: it’s the love you share, and that’s the thing I’ll give back to you in photographs you can keep forever.