Behind the Lens & Between the Feedings: Dispatch №6
What I'm Actually Shooting Her On (And Why)
If you've ever agonized over which camera to reach for in a fleeting moment, or wondered what a documentary photographer actually uses to document her own child, this one's for you.
The Nikon Z7ii
At the end of last year I upgraded my mirrorless setup to the Nikon Z7ii. Nikon haters, the door is right there. For everyone else, this camera is small but mighty. Light in the hand, powerful in the frame, and paired with a fixed 28mm f/2.8 lens it's genuinely all I need.
Images are naturally fall into two moods depending on the light: bright and airy on a slow morning when the window light is soft, and contrasty and moody in the late afternoons when the shadows are doing something interesting. I'm not making a conscious choice between the two. It just comes out of whatever the moment gives me. That instinct, I'm realizing, is one of the things that should make a photographer a photographer regardless of what's in front of the lens.
Shooting her feels different from shooting a client though. The pressure is less in some ways. She's not waiting for me, there's no timeline, no wedding schedule running in the background. But there's a different kind of weight to it. This is fleeting in a way that a wedding isn't. She will never be exactly this age or size again after today. That awareness sits quietly behind every frame.
The iPhone
And then of course there's my phone.
My parents have asked if there's been a single day of her life she hasn't had her picture taken. The answer is no. She's a fascinating subject.
The iPhone comes out when the Nikon feels too far away. Middle of the night. A spontaneous laugh in her bouncy chair. The kind of second that doesn't wait for a camera bag to be unzipped. It's also a different format entirely — raw, unedited, no pressure. And honestly? Some of my favorite captures have come from it.
It caught her first real smiles. Little videos of her in motion that a still frame could never hold. And one evening when she was placed in the bathtub the most perfectly grumpy face I have ever seen in my life. No camera in the world could have been faster than my phone in that moment.
The part that actually matters
Here's what I keep coming back to: the gear matters less than the person behind it. And in this particular season, it matters less than the person in front of it.
These photos, whether they come from a Nikon or an iPhone, are for me. They are my attempt to hold onto a period of time that I already know is moving faster than I can keep up with. I am grateful every single day that I have the eye and the instincts to capture it well. And I am especially grateful that when the time comes to print these I know exactly how to make them ready.
She deserves the wall space.
More soon. 📸🤍