So in the loads of spare time that I have (oh man, I can barely even write that sentence… hah!) I try and devote a bit of space to my personal creative work. Which does often involve my kids, but not always.

My background in photography actually started in Fine Art. I didn’t get into portraiture until my friends began having children and I saw the amazing connection that family has and I had to begin capturing it. But even before that – I’ve always needed a human element to my images. I’m not much of a landscape photographer – my eye just doesn’t work that way – but creative portraiture – well, that calls to me.

I was scrolling through facebook one afternoon and came upon an image by one of my favorites, Jessica Drossin. It was a gorgeous image of a lovely dark haired model in a milky pool of water. I was mesmerized.

I immediately messaged my mentor and friend, Vanessa Powell (who is an amazing creative artist and photographer) and said – I want to do this. How do I do this?

She laughed and said she would love to help me.

A couple days later, Vanessa sent me a link to Conceptual Magazine, and as it happened, they were looking for submissions for their 4th issue, and guess what the theme was? Baths of Milk. Oh yeah! So now, not only did I have a vision, I had a timeline! So we scheduled our shoot!

Vanessa’s lovely daughter Natalie agreed to be one of my models and Samantha, a model friend of hers also agreed to come over and let me dunk her in milk.

Side Note: milk baths are actually super good for your skin. So – really, it was like a spa day for them! Really!

It ended up being a super sunny day, which was totally not was I was looking for, but Vanessa has a perfect car port with lovely shade, so we setup under that and ran a hose from her utility sink to give our ladies WARM water for their bath. Because God knows I wasn’t going to ask them to lay down in a pool full of freezing water for half an hour… Actually, I totally would have – but thankfully i didn’t have to!

And I spent the next half hour perched precariously on top of a ladder, holding my camera as far away from my body as possible and praying to get these shots.

Samantha’s lovely mother came along to check out the action and took some awesome BTW images. So here you can see exactly what shenanigans we had going on:

Everyone asks – How much milk did you use?!?!

Answer: Really, not that much! 2 gallons was all – the rest was water – and that was plenty to give the water the perfect amount of cloudiness

The series is titled Amor Matris – translated to Mother’s Love

The inspiration and concept is the bond of love between mother and daughter – unbreakable and unlike any force on earth. A mother longs for her daughter, births and nurtures her. And she grows – into a child and then, a woman.

And here are my final images, that I submitted to the publication

After submission, of course, I had to wait like a month to find out if they would even make it in! When I was contacted by Rocio Mireles, the director of the magazine that I had made it in, I was so excited! Obviously. And I waited very impatiently for the release date on Nov 1.

Nov 1 was a Sunday, and a daylight saving Sunday no less, so the kids got up extra early, and I had pulled them into our bed for a movie to delay the inevitable demands for breakfast. I turned on my phone and saw the notification that the magazine was out! And then I saw the cover. My cover. My heart stopped for a hot minute. I got the cover?! I got the freaking cover!?!?! I literally hopped out of bed and started jumping around. And then promptly blew up my social media all about it.

So, check out what Conceptual Magazine is all about here and if you feel like purchasing a copy, that would be super cool too. Obviously I did!