Behind the Lens & Between the Feedings: Dispatch №2

Notes from the fog: A photographer mom's first weeks in NYC

Somewhere in the blur of the second trimester, Instagram shifted my algorithm. Suddenly it was all nursery tours, swaddle tutorials, and unsolicited opinions about sleep schedules. But every now and then something genuinely useful slipped through.

One piece of advice stopped me mid-scroll: pick a song to sing while you're pregnant. Something you hum in the shower, something you return to while cooking dinner. Because when baby arrives, that song is already familiar to them. I didn't have to think very long and started humming Moon River.

I couldn't tell you exactly why it came to me at first but once it did it made complete sense. It's a romantic ode to adventure, to the places you haven't been yet, to everything that's still ahead. And that anticipation of what's around the next corner is a similar feeling I chase every time I pick up my camera.

The first time I sang it to her was right after she arrived. I didn't plan it. It just came out, the way things do when you stop thinking and start feeling. She calmed almost immediately and she's been falling asleep to it ever since.

Now here I am, a month in, at four am on a Friday, singing Moon River in a quiet room and getting a little teary about it.

I'm tired. Genuinely, deeply tired in a way I didn't fully have the vocabulary for before this. The fog is real. But underneath it is this excitement I can't quite contain when I let myself think about the future. All the places we'll go. All the things she'll see for the first time that I get to witness through her eyes.

My camera has barely left my side since she arrived. Some might find it excessive. I understand that. But I know what it feels like to wish you had captured something and didn't and I'm not willing to feel that way about a single moment of this. So I keep shooting. The morning light across her face. Her hand wrapped around my finger. 

There's a tension I'm still figuring out the one between being present and wanting to document. As a photographer it's not a new feeling, but it has never felt quite this personal or this urgent. Maybe both things can be true at once and hopefully it will make me into a better photographer for all.

For now I'm here. Tired and foggy and more inspired than I have ever been. There are so many places we have yet to go. I can only hope we get to cross them all together, in style.

More soon. 📸🤍