mary | senior preview // portland, oregon

A few shots of beautiful Mary. This girl is such a cutie, and she rocks the curls so well. One of my favorite senior sessions to date.

More to come. 

-lucia marie 

-photos copyright (c) 2013 l.m. photography-

before summer slips out the back door

We went to the beach in August, over my 18th birthday. We visited the same house we have been visiting since I was two feet shorter and celebrating a toothless eighth. I haven't changed (or grown) all that much. And neither has "Glory Be."

I love the ocean. I used to be afraid of it, and still am, a little. But the same waves that used to frighten me with their pounding and roaring and foaming wrath now caress my toes and send a shiver of delicious cold--not paralyzing fear--up my spine. Did my fears grow up along with me? Or do I simply see the ocean as something under God's power? Because His power is mighty. And I love the ocean because it whispers His name in the froth that laps at my feet, and the billows that crest the rocks.

And now, summer is slipping out the back door. I have taken a long, long break from my little web home, and it has felt strangely wonderful and sad all at the same time. I have cut back on computer time to focus on other things--school, now ended, and photography, and simply living. But I love this feeling--I had forgotten how much--the typing of my simple little words, the compilation of my simple little photos, and the moments they all bring back to me.

 I promise not to be gone so long again. But the future is closing in upon me with breathtaking speed, and Autumn is approaching--crisp, cozy Autumn. My heart is full.

stars and stripes forever.

i love America., hip hip hooray!

and don't try to tell me we don't have freedom, because we do.

we might lose it any day now, but we have it, so i am thankful.

some parts of it I am not proud of;

we are greatly in need of a revival. 

but mostly, I am just thankful. 

we have more freedom than thousands, millions of people dream of.

we are headed down if we don't take a sharp turn now,

but God is still here. and so is freedom.  

so i am thankful. i live in a free country, and i am proud to it call 'home.' 

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HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY! 

//

what did yours look like? 

mown hay should really be a perfume.

It really should. 

I would bottle that scent up and put it away for a December day, when I would take it out and smell golden fields while I sighed and watched the bleak grey landscape of winter out my window. 

It's summer. The golden time; the hay bale time; the season of blushing roses, straw hats, raspberry bushes plump with their harvest, and barefoot walks through waist-high wheat. There are flower seeds in our window sill, freckles on my nose, and sundresses dangling in the breeze on the cloths line. 

Meanwhile, thank-you notes are piled in the mailbox, and my graduation cap hangs in the closet to collect dust until I pull it out in the eve of life and remember that dream called youth. For yes, I am at long last graduated--and the days stretch before me like an entrance. Summer opens her arms, and I feel like jumping into them with "wild abandon."

But that sounds too poetic. I think my summer will be just as oxymoron-ic it always is: crazily quiet and hectically slow, tinted with the scent of freshly mown hay. 

daisy ventures.

I sling my bag onto my bike and swing onto the seat. My feet pump the pedals and I rattle down the fielded hill, feeling every pothole. I reach the quiet road and skim down the pavement, feeling the cool spring wind blowing my face. I pass daisies bobbing their heads to the beat of the breeze, their faces almost golden in the setting sun. I stop and grab my camera from its bag. 

A woman strolling by stops to ask me what I'm doing. 

"Taking pictures of daisies," I say. It sounds simple, and silly. But she smiles and gazes at the flowers before us in a rather wistful way.

"I used to make daisy chains with my sisters," she says. And I smile, too. 

I pedal down the road with a chain in my hair and petals on my wheels. I pass an old house with an old bike and an old cat in its front yard. The mailbox is surrounded by a tangle of greens, and I wonder what sort of letters it has held in the years gone by. 

I glimpse a man in the window, and I hurry by, embarrassed for stopping to stare. But I like to admire, and old houses are more beautiful than new ones. Their windows have souls. 

marie | portland, oregon senior photography

"Sometimes, people are beautiful.

Not just in looks,

Not just in what they say,

Just in what they are."  -Markus Zusak

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I met Marie this past Fall when I joined my local swim team (and dang, is she crazy talented in that venue!). She is such a sweetheart, and has some of the prettiest blue eyes I have ever seen. We had so much fun traversing through the fields (even though she is allergic) and the Scotchbroom, even trespassing once (shh!) in someone's backyard to get some shots with the lilac bushes. 

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