A little more about Me
The Basics
I’m a free-spirited, fun-loving, first-gen born-in-America Polish gal who loves food and spends her days dreaming up ways to build an empire for my future family.
When I say I love food, I need to touch on that for a moment, because it’s SERIOUS (lol). My mom’s hobby was cooking, so dinner every day growing up was some wonderfully new creation each night (#blessed). Cooking is my meditation, and I feel good when I’m preparing good food. It’s pretty rare that me and my fiance eat out (but when we do it’s probably sushi). I love adding veggies to every dish and playing Chopped with the items in my fridge!
It may not surprise you then that we love to grow our own veggies and herbs each year! I even make my own compost for our garden. I am passionate about using things to their fullest potential, reducing my waste output, and re-using items. Recycling also feeds my bargaining soul.
I’m motivated by new experiences and love to see parts of the world I’ve never seen before! If I’m traveling, I’m going to try to stay local so I can have an truly immersive experience.
The WHY
I left school with a focus in fashion. There is something so fun to me about the creativity, collaboration, and story-telling that comes along with that type of photography. If you scroll down to the bottom of my Instagram, you’ll even see some of my fashion work still there!
But then I started second shooting weddings to make some extra money, and I fell in LOVE! The whole day is beautiful, fun, and full of all the feels. It can be stressful, but it’s a different kind of stress. It’s the kind that I like to deal with. I can handle running around for 10 hours in a day searching for special moments to capture and feel like I could keep going! I feel so accomplished after a wedding day.
And I realized that when I photograph wedding couples and families, I’m documenting the people who haven't given up, who never stop evolving...who listen, who adapt, and who work through their differences...who would do anything for each other because they are invested...and who have come out the other side better for it. And THAT is what I want to pour my heart into!
And I bring to it what I loved about fashion photography - creativity, collaboration (with your vision and other vendors), and gorgeous story-telling, moment by moment.
The Degree
It IS official! In 2017, I graduated from The Illinois Institute of Art with a Bachelor’s Fine Arts Degree in Digital Photography. I graduated as Valedictorian of my class with a 4.0 GPA and got to speak at our graduation ceremony. It was truly an honor and blessing!
In my opinion, what my degree means to you is that I have a ton of experience and have photographed just about everything, so there’s not much that can throw me off. My education and training in professional photography and lighting means that I’ll able to make sure you get amazing photos NO MATTER the environment or situation.
Favorite Travel Experience
4 days after I graduated with my BFA, I went on a volunteer trip to Tanzania. It was a 40 hour trip to get there, and our home for 2 weeks was this multi-level wood bungalow right on the water! We built schools for children and adults of all ages to learn and taught the locals English so they could learn to make a living for themselves with the yearly tourists. While “in the area”, I went on a 6-day trek up Mt. Kilimanjaro! Wow. Just wow. That was one of the hardest, most intense, most beautiful, most empowering, and hands-down coolest party story experiences I’ve EVER had. There are no words to describe it. I saw every kind of ecosystem from rainforest to glaciers in the matter of those 6 days! I have videos, and one day I’ll compile them into a documentary of sorts (let’s just say I have a lot of projects). Feel free to ask to see some videos!