i’m addicted. and i’m also on instagram now, if you like you can find me: Karey Michelle.

so, Hello 2012!

I am quickly approaching my first anniversary as a married woman and am asking myself where has the time gone?!? This time last year I was approaching my wedding day, putting in offers for a new home, and stressing out over such crazy random details that I can’t even remember what they were right now. It’s funny how that works. I’m terrible at New Years Resolutions by the way… as a creative person I’ve always felt a bit intimidated and intrigued by the practice, where I want to join in with everything I’ve got and go for the gold, but then my list turns into a reminder of all the areas I’ve failed in getting done. No fun in that light. But I also know that you can’t hit a target you can’t see so this whole resolution thing is probably important. The biggest lesson I’ve learned these past couple years is that I can’t do it all on my own. I have to share with others what I’m aiming for so that they can help keep me accountable, no matter how scary or ridiculous it may seem. So that said, I want to share some of my “goals” with you for this next year since I heard that making them public can be a form of accountability. So, I’ll take what I can get and hope whoever said that is right. *Some* of my 2012 resolutions are as follows:

1. Quiet time in the morning for 20 minutes before I start my day.
2. Launch my new website with my new branding. (it’s in the works and i can’t wait to share. but getting it FINISHED is, well, you know… ugh.)
3. Blog at least three times a week, as a regular thing, in practice by the end of the year.
4. Portrait business launched. Did you even know how much I love doing portraits?
5. Get more personal on my blog. [*Started as of this post!]
6. Get an office manger. (DONE!!! I can’t wait to introduce you to Andrea!! And how can it hurt to put something on my list that I’ve already done?… I call it encouragement.)
7. Plug in to San Clemente and my new Talega neighborhood. I want to be known and give to those I live in community with.
8. Go primal/paleo all year long. Don’t worry, my husband is in on this so I have a chance.
9. Shoot for the stars… there are a lot of dreams I have for my business and I love that my dad is always telling me to dream bigger. So if you ever take me out on a coffee date I’ll probably spill what some of my stars look like, but in the mean time I’ll keep working on the getting-more-personal-on-my-blog part… which means I’m still shy and have most of the details in my journal for now. But yay for me for getting this far right now

2012, I can’t wait to meet you, thank you for a new beginning! I love new beginnings. I need them.

And since all posts are better with a picture, here is my husband with MY camera in my face as we hiked Multnomah falls with the fam over Christmas. I like how he see’s things I don’t see.

He’s my favorite.

~Karey

If you want to raise the bar in your own photography business, I would *HIGHLY* recommend signing up. Melissa will be covering everything from shooting to the behind-the-scenes business topics so whatever it is you think you need help with, chances are it’s covered. And it’s going to be FUN She just had her workshop website redone and it’s so awesome! Check it out:

The dates for the MJ 2 Day Workshops are:

Annapolis, Maryland — June 11-12, 2012
Orange County, California — August 6-7, 2012

I hope you’ll join us!

Happy Wednesday!

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Someday I’ll share some pictures of our new place (whenever I can clean it first!) but I have a lot of shoots and the like to share first, so I thought to get started I would post a favorite from some of my work this summer that is pretty much all over the map from San Diego to St. Louis…. these just make me happy:

And summer isn’t over yet right?!?

In November of 2001 I went on a trip with my church to partner with the Salvation Army and just offer whatever help we could in New York. If it meant serving a firefighter or police officer a cup of coffee in ground zero, or serving dinner to a dentist volunteering their time to help identify victims from a plane crash at the medical canteen near NYU with the make-shift morgue, or just package some water bottles to be sent out to ground zero from a warehouse at JFK then we wanted to be there. It was one of the most life changing trips I’ve ever had and it will stay with me forever. I wish there were words to share that would justify the significance of this trip in my life with you, but I can’t find them. I wish I could share with you the smell I remember in the air, but then again I’m grateful that’s just not possible. That smell… the constant reminder of the lives lost and the ash settling in every corner of the city was pretty overwhelming and everything within me screamed “this is NOT normal.”

I remember this:

This was the view of Ground Zero from when my team was there. This was taken in film, by one of my teammates.

This was five years before I became a photographer, and I didn’t even have a camera to document the experience. My good friend Dave graciously lent me his digital camera to take what pictures I could. [Thanks again Dave.] I just remember the buildings looking like skeletons, and that often they were finding fallen brethren in the rubble and we could hear the music leading a parade of servicemen towards the make-shift morgue in an NYU alley. It was unreal. But REAL… and that made it all the more difficult to wrap our minds around it all.

It was a time that I remember our country feeling united as one and sending love and encouragement to those they didn’t even know which was pretty amazing to witness…

And this is me inside one of the boxes filled with water bottles that we organized… I was only 20!… now you can do the math

We were all sent into teams of four within our group of 30+ or so, and long story short, my friend Kristen in this shot became a super good friend of mine and now she and her husband are mentors for me and Zak in our marriage. She hadn’t even met her husband yet in this picture either… and another teammate is cousins with one of my husbands best friends… although I wouldn’t meet Zak for another 9 years. It’s amazing to see Providence at work, and have the benefit of looking back over the last 10 years to see it all come together…

I guess that is the thing about tragedies… that in the midst of such great suffering and loss that new life and relationships can spring from places that wouldn’t have been given the opportunity to happen otherwise. Looking back over the last 10 years (can I really look at time spans in decades now??), I am amazed and thankful for the people I’ve been able to meet and work with. I will never forget the conversations I had with the workers at Ground Zero, the dentists at the Medical Canteen, or the smell of ash. I will always remember the fight for hope, for a new day, and for the desire to be included with Providence to help redeem all that has gone wrong with this world.

Our burre really felt like home while we were there, and I loved everything about it. Especially the chaise lounges that we could layout on and take a nap out in the sun. And the good news? We never got burned! Thank you coppertone 50+ … you may have painted me white as Casper but my freckled skin is grateful.

Every morning we would sit out on our porch and read before breakfast. I thoroughly enjoyed my french pressed coffee and hang time with one of my all time favorite writers, Anne Lamott. She just has this amazing way with words and a rare ability to write from a place of transparency and grace that transforms my heart and inspires me to grow and live like she does. She is highly in touch with her quirks, her failures, her fears, and yet still loves and accepts herself and gives herself grace and from there is able to extend that to those around her. I long to find that place for myself too and her writing is aiding that process. So that said, I recommend her highly.

Warning: no makeup.

This was also a morning usual:

Those shells are filled with water so we can wash our feet off of the sand before going into the burre, and they are at every entry. And every morning the frogs would find them and remind us who really lives here

Qamea did a great job of offering us some really amazing activities, a couple of which were hikes to waterfalls where we could jump off them and/or swim around. We would take a boat over to the island just across from us called Taveuni and then get driven to a trailhead. This first hike we went on was a little over 5 miles that went through the jungle on the coastline. It was gorgeous!

Bug spray was a necessity so as long as we were prepared we didn’t get bothered by them much… but my camera bag was another story.

We hiked past a village with a bunch of kids just hanging out on the trail, they were so precious! They reminded me a lot of the kids I met in Papua New Guinea. You can check out those posts from a couple years ago on my old blog HERE,  HERE and HERE.

This their school that the older kids go to during the day. Class was in session.

Our guide Eddie was a mover and a shaker and hard to keep up with even though he was hiking barefoot the whole time (well hard for me to hike that fast and take pictures at the same time! no joke.). He has two spots he stops for pictures and this was the first one… it was so funny because he would say “Pictuuure!” and then as fast as the shutter clicked we’d hear “Okay, WE GO!”

Note the walking stick. All Zak.

Gotta take a selfy.

I was seriously blown away by the landscape! So lush and rich in color everywhere I looked.

Can you find Zak?

I love spindly trees. So unique.

So lush and so green! Could not get over the colors over there.

One of the villages we walked by was drying out their Kava in the sun so you can see our guide Eddie showing us part of their process for preparing it with Zak. Yes, we tried the Kava at the Wednesday night Kava Ceremony, and it tasted like dirty soap water that left your tongue numb. Bleh, but interesting nonetheless.

Ok I think that is enough for one post, I’ll have to break this all up somehow so I don’t have 50 photos in one post! Haha. Next up are the waterfalls!

to DIE! for. thanks jered

I’ve had a lot of clients go through Costco Travel to book their honeymoons and then come home with raving reviews of the experience, so we naturally went the same direction. Using Costco combined with TripAdvisor, we fell upon Qamea Resort and Spa in Fiji, and after looking through their photos of the resort everything reminded me of my trip to PNG a couple years ago. I showed it to Zak and he said “BOOK IT”! So we did. It was SUCH a good decision and I can’t imagine having started off our marriage in any other place. It was PERFECT in every way. So that said, if you are planning your honeymoon, research, research, research. Write down what each of you really want, and find a place that makes you both beyond stoked, adjust your budget, then book.

Our first night we were laying out under the bazillion stars and Zak said, “I’m home.”

And I felt at home with him.

Our trip to Qamea started with about a 10 hour flight from LAX to Nadi, then about an hour flight to Taveuni (with delay of course), about a 20 minute van ride, and finally a 10 minute-ish boat ride over to the island. We’re in island time. The inter-island flight was pretty sweet since it was a smaller plane with some amazing views of Fiji.

Landing!!

Welcome to Taveuni’s airport. This was our plane…

And here is our van transfer to the boat.

This was probably the best view an airport has to offer. In my opinion.

Welcome to the water in Qamea! It has the most beautiful blues you have ever seen in your entire life.

As soon as we arrived to the resort they fed us! Which was great because we were starving and lunch wasn’t for a couple more hours. We had fresh papaya, pineapple, muffins, juice, coffee and tea. And their welcome drink was something tropical with midori in there somewhere I think. It was great and we were happy to have finally made it over!

After our “snack” they showed us to our burre…

Our bathroom with the outside shower:

Our complimentary champagne on our outside porch. We loved reading out here before breakfast and in the afternoon…

It took Zak all of 5 seconds to hop in our hammock.

And our VIEW!

That’s the first post for now, more to share soon!

We got married on February 27th 2011 and it was the best day of my life! I can’t wait to share the details of our day all captured by the fabulous John Woods, and 2nd Shot by the equally fabulous Jered Scott!

Coming soon