How do I even begin? Personally, 2022 was the best year of my life! Our sweet miracle baby was born in February and I was able to finally run my business full time while also being a stay at home mom! I left teaching this spring, which was a bittersweet transition for me. I was an elementary school Spanish teacher for a decade, so transitioning to business owner mom has been a challenge, but a welcome one! I have loved being here at home for all of my baby girl’s little moments and not having to miss a thing. It is such a blessing. I have had people tell me “Oh, you are sooo lucky you can stay at home with your baby!” They are not wrong…I AM lucky… AND I also put in a decade of work building a side business while teaching full time and spent 4+ years going through expensive fertility treatments to get here. I feel so proud of myself for building this business and dream life for myself and my family. I remember attending an A.J. Dunlap photographer course years ago and hearing her define her “purpose” behind everything she does in her business. What was her WHY? It got me thinking…what is my WHY? Why am I running this side business? At the time, March 2018, we were almost a year into trying for a baby, and I knew that my WHY was going to be my family. I decided then and there that when I got pregnant, I wanted to leave my teaching career and run my photography business full time while being a Stay at Home Mom. It took us 4 more years to bring our rainbow baby home. During those 4 years, my “WHY” became even stronger. After working so hard and tirelessly to start our family, I was not willing to miss time with them. I started taking all of the jobs I could get and rebuilding my brand into something I was proud to represent full time. When I finally was successfully pregnant in summer 2021, I knew that would be my last school year as a teacher.

Fast forward to spring 2022, I left my teaching job for maternity leave and never went back. My life as a full time photographer started this past February. I have made so many choices, sacrifices, and taken so many steps in the past decade to get where I am today. Every weekend full of shoots, week mornings up at 5am to edit, week nights after a long day at work on the computer working on my business were all SO worth it. I feel so lucky to have the opportunity to raise my daughter while also running my business, AND I feel like a badass boss babe who worked hard to create her own happiness and fulfill her WHY. I am now able to work my dream job full time, be creative, have flexibility, contribute an income to our household, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY raise my daughter and be with her on a daily basis. I adore spending as much time with my little family as possible. It does not even matter what little business or personal goals I accomplished this year, because I can finally say that in 2022, I made my WHY a reality. 🙂

I want to say thank you so much to each and every one of my amazing clients that booked with me in 2022. YOU are the reason I am able to live this dream. YOU are the reason I am able to make my WHY a reality. Thank you so much for believing in me as a business owner and photographer! I adore capturing your genuine and personal moments and getting to know you over the years. This year, I completed 74 total photo sessions (while also raising a newborn baby and becoming a first time parent…whew!). A few highlights include photographing a proposal, a few families’ maternity photos and then their newborn photos (one amazing family I was able to photograph maternity in the spring, newborn in the summer, and 5 month family photos in the fall) , multiple friends’ newborn sessions, a few miracle babies like my own, double the mini-sessions I was able to shoot last year, poppin confetti cannons at sessions, transitioning from fully weekend shooting to week nights so that I can spend more time with my family, and honestly the most miraculous highlight of the year was not having to reschedule ONE photo session due to weather. NOT ONE! (Am I missing one? Tell me if I am wrong haha!) This was my favorite year yet as a photographer, and for that I am so grateful. Please enjoy highlights of all 74 of my sessions this year. Thank you for an amazing 2022, I am SO ready to see what 2023 has in store for Elizabeth Alice Photography!

Being a photographer and a mama means you have your camera out ALL THE TIME. I mean, it’s not like my iPhone is not also COMPLETELY FULL of photos of my beautiful daughter. Here are a few of my favorite professional shots of her throughout the year! 🙂

We were in front of the camera ourselves a few times this year! Our friends gave us SUCH generous gift and we had the privilege of working with our wedding photographer, Graham Terhune, for maternity photos and newborn photos. I was also able to participate in a photographer swap in November with one of my favorite local photographers and friend, Whitney Gremaud. We spent an hour at NCMA taking photos of each others’ families! Their beautiful work is featured below! You can find these images all over the walls of our home!

Another amazing thing that happened this year was that I had the privilege of working with Chelsea from Ten Acre Paper Co. to create a new logo for my 2023 Elizabeth Alice Photography rebrand! Her beautiful work is featured below and can be seen throughout my new website. I am so excited to launch this new website, and can’t wait to see what 2023 has in store for Elizabeth Alice Photography. 🙂 Thank you for following along and for all of the support! Happy New Year!