Studio Journal of Amy Deputy Photography

I am feeling particularly nostalgic this evening…

Maybe it’s the snow and the soft cloudy days nestling me…

Maybe it’s my delayed reaction to a new year, a chance to trace my time and reorient my compass…

Maybe I’m savoring a sense of completion…

Maybe and most likely, I’m feeling delightfully grateful.

I hear my husband and my son bantering in the next room, snippets of laughter and ever~so~earnest questions waft like the chocolate chip cookies I baked. Homework is done. Folded laundry rests. Neat white reminder bundles stack on the stairs. And the slideshow below…it rests, at home on this journal, complete.

Shadow and Grace chronicles 22 years of my photography. It starts with the first worth~a~darn photograph I made as a student in Kentucky. It ends exactly this time last year after my husband received his new kidney. What you might want to know before viewing this lengthy piece it this…some find the content challenging. I offer a very personal no~holds~barred collection of photographs. I trace time by revisiting my years at newspapers, my challenges of coping with my now 14-year-old son’s Cowden Syndrome, my husband’s Polycystic Kidney Disease and running a small business. Some folks have asked how I photographed my family, particularly my son’s early years. My answer? I knew then and know now, one day these images would be needed for him to trace his time.

What I see now, a year later, are beautiful laundry piles on the same steps lulled by the gentle snores of my family.

grateful ~ amy

{ music courtesy of Triple Scoop Music }

“We see things as we are.”
~Anaïs Nin

I wrote about the Foundation Workshop a year ago when I attended last year as team leader. Heading to Dallas is somewhat of a yearly pilgrimage. Tomorrow I head back to Texas and meet a new team of photographers.

The five day photography immersion experience started by Huy Nguyen, former Dallas Morning News photojournalist, is devoted to teaching wedding photographers to be better visual storytellers by former news photographers Greg Gibson, David Murray, Brooks Whittington and Tyler Wirken.

I am again blessed with another powerful group. Each is an amazing photographer with incredible gifts. I am so excited to hunker down in Texas and live pictures with my photography family. The 2010 Team Amy includes Britt Bailey, Bonnie Barry, Gulnara Samoilova, Emmy Sherman, Tina Wilson and Tak Yi Young with mentoring by Rachel LaCour Neisen, Huy Nguyen and Jay Premack.

The slideshow below is from the 2009 workshop, re-edited for a presentation for my 2010 Digital Wedding Forum Conference presentation in Nashville. Thank you to 2009 participants Britt Bailey, Marcin Czech, Erin Beach, Daniel Chinn and Scott Williams, Jay Premack, Sergio Lopez, Anja Schlein and David Murray.

Hello new beautiful team. Let’s rock Texas.

love ~ amy

{ note: special thanks to Triple Scoop Music }

What a beautiful year of kindness and love amidst the world’s deep difficulties. I am so fortunate to have photographed so many fabulous weddings last year. I send my thanks to the lovely couples who chose my studio to document their day. As our world community experiences great challenge, images of loving kindness may perhaps serve to balance, perhaps tip, the scale. Accompanied by my stalwart ally, friend and second photographer David Bick, we witnessed truly amazing celebrations.

Photographing how we care and love each other has, for me, the effect of slicing to the heart of the matter, even amongst the concern. In these images I see hope. I see humor. I see delight. In this small way I hold the light. I hope you enjoy this little movie of some of my favorites.

love ~ amy

{ music courtesy of  Triple Scoop Music }

Becky and Josh were married at the Chesapeake Beach Resort and Spa in Chesapeake Beach, Maryland.