why I photograph childhood

little Michelle, circa 1994

When I was a kid, I was hyper aware of growing up. I dreaded it. I loved childhood. I was so in tune with the fact that it was fleeting and that my life would not always allow me to run and play whenever I wanted, that my imagination would never be quite what it was then, that circumstances and responsibilities change as time passes. I used to get sad about my peers being in a hurry to grow up, thinking “you have the rest of your life to be grown up!” 

This feeling never went away. I’ve struggled with my Peter Pan complex so much. How do I keep the things I love so much about childhood in my adult life? How do I hold on to the sense of freedom and innocence of childhood amidst responsibility and awareness of horrible things in the world and the tendency of humans to over-complicate life? 

baby Lauren, 2010.

I have been drawn to babies and little kids since I WAS a little kid. I started working with kids when I was 15, because it was the most natural thing in the world for me. I never stopped. I took on part-time nanny work at 18 and I still do it to this day because it fills me up so full of love that I could explode. It wasn’t far into my nanny years that I started picking up a camera for a different reason than I ever had before: to freeze the tiny little things that the kids I loved did so that I wouldn’t forget. The kids all grew so fast that week to week, everything was constantly different. So many of the moments I was inspired by were truly split-seconds that weren’t repeated, or they only happened for a few weeks and then they were gone. Sometimes I look back at the photos I took and I can see things that the same kids still do years later, and I LOVE that. 

toddler Lauren, 2011.

I fell in love with all of it. I fell in love with using my camera to make visual art from the moments that whisper quietly: this is childhood. The sense of wonder and the natural tendency to just BE. I fell in love with watching and playing and non-verbally training the kids to ignore my camera and just play with me. Childhood lifestyle photography. I just speak the language of it. 

Andrew & Lauren, 2011.

I’m sharing this because I want to share my heart and my perspective and what I love to do. And partly because I want to encourage people to slow down. To look at little things and let those things fill them up. Sometimes I’m so full of words and stories and emotions that I don’t even know where to start sharing because the attention span of social media doesn’t have a great reputation. 

I want to be there for your family. For this moment. Because it’s not going to be exactly like this again. I want you to remember how it all felt: the snuggles and the giggles and the personalities and the emotional drama of a toddler melt-down and the tiny-ness of them and all the love. It all moves so fast and I know that life is so busy, and to me that makes it even more important to somehow preserve it. To me, life and love are art, and I just want to create as much art as possible. 

me & Declan, 2015.

xo, Michelle

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See my art in my Etsy shop or on maryandluna.com. 

if you’re interested in a session with me for you and/or your kids in Orange County, CA, visit my website or email me! maryandluna@gmail.com

a title-less post, I guess.

This is all I have to share today because my brain is full of details for current & upcoming projects. My favorite season is becoming the busiest season! Here's a quote from one of my favorite books (+ a photo of me in the mountains at one of my favorite childhood spots about a week ago). This quote helps me when I try to understand absolutely everything. Now I'm off to sketch & design new pieces!

xo, Michelle

Find me on Facebook & Instagram (@maryandluna) | view my Etsy shop

the details that are worth it.

I came across this ^ little piece of writing on tumblr (my favorite source of inspiration) years ago, and it now hangs on a little bulletin board above my desk. It serves as a reminder of why I'm trying so hard to be an artist. I guess I should share why.

I do art because I have to. I don’t know how NOT to. It just pours out of me. I absolutely crave taking photos, sketching out ideas, putting the world onto paper, making things and figuring out how to put it together in a visually interesting way, writing out my thoughts until my hand starts to cramp and I start to fall asleep. In my life, I’ve had countless other hobbies, but I always came back to art. Almost everything I love is connected to some form of art. And I see life more clearly though the lens of my camera. I’m drawn to anything that makes you feel something. I’m constantly seeking the things that matter, whatever they might be. I’m always in a little dream world in my head, just wandering. My life made a lot more sense the moment that I realized the things that made me the happiest and the most alive were the moments that felt fleeting, the moments that I wanted to capture in a photo or put into a piece of visual art, so I can remember how beautiful life can be. That’s the feeling I’m always striving for when I make anything; I want to make something that, when I look at it, I simply feel happy and peaceful. Life can be hard. Relationships (of any kind) can be hard. I want to make things that ease that stress, even if it’s just for a second. Looking at something beautiful can break that cycle of negativity in your mind, because it slows you down. It gives you perspective. It allows you to drift off for a minute and then re-focus on positivity. More than anything, I just like how art and making art can transport me to a place where I feel such a sense of wonder. I like to feel like I’m floating.

The reason I’m talking about this is because I struggle so much with the realistic details of starting an art business. I’ve been working on building all of this for over a year now, and in some ways, I’m great with it. I have a clear vision for what I want to do, and I see the big picture of how all the business parts fit together. It’s just those details that make me feel absolutely insane. I’m not a salesperson- I didn’t inherit that gene from my dad. Despite my history of excelling in math, I am not a numbers person. I’m basically obsessed with social media, but marketing does not come naturally to me at all. All these little things that go into setting up and running a small business give me a headache (literally) and make me wonder why I’m doing this at all. I get so wrapped up in these details that I can’t even figure out what the point of it all is. So I force myself to pull back from it all, and re-focus on the big picture (that comes so easily to me, it’s ridiculous). I’m doing this because I want to create things that that are beautiful and things that matter. I want my work to be my passion, and I want to be able to create as much and as often as I can. I want the thing that comes the most naturally to me in the world to be the thing I get to do everyday.  And I want to be me. Creating things makes me feel like myself, and I just love how serene I am when I’m in the process of designing, and then the intense pride and excitement I feel when I finish a piece and I like how it looks. That’s the reason I’m doing this. That’s what makes all these petty details (the ones I don’t like at all) worth it. Someday when I look back on all this frustration I’m feeling, I hope that it will have been worth it.

I have to constantly remind myself of these things:

• There is a learning curve in all this; I have to cut myself some slack because I cannot build a business overnight. Especially when I’m 23 and have no prior business experience. (I think I just get so ambitious, thinking I can take on the world, that I don’t have enough patience for things that take time).

• I have already done so much. I have to say, “Seriously, Michelle, look at what you’ve done.” Ambition is good, but I have to constantly remember that I’m proud of what I’ve already been able to do.

I felt like I needed to write about this, because I really struggle with this every day, even in the midst of creating something new and feeling happy about it. My mind is always my biggest battle. I never know if anyone knows what I’m talking about, because I realize that I’m a bit of an eccentric and, for the most part, a hippie and a daydreamer. But I’m sure there are other people who enjoy art the way I do. If there weren’t, art wouldn’t be as big of a part of human culture as it is. And this need for art goes back to the beginning of human existence. So if you’re out there and you’re just as much of a dreamer and a wanderer as I am, let’s be friends.

xo, Michelle