Hi, I'm Heather.
I've had a camera in my hand since I was fifteen, when my dad gave me a Minolta X-370 (though I was taking pictures long before that).
Not because I had grand plans to be a photographer someday…I just loved people. I loved watching them. The way they laughed, the way they looked out the window when they thought no one was paying attention, the tiny expressions that spoke volumes.
Today, I'm the photographer behind Lark & Light Studio, serving the Piedmont of North and South Carolina. I specialize in private school portraits, family sessions, senior sessions and event photography.
For years, I worked in the school photography industry. I learned the poses and sales tactics, the follow-ups and the urgency, and all the things I was told were supposed to work.
None of it felt like me.
So I stepped away and built Lark & Light Studio.
As a mom, I was fine with the school photos my boys brought home. They documented a moment, and I'm grateful to have them. But they aren't the photos I pull out when I want someone to really know my kids.
Well...except for one. My oldest's sophomore picture.
His eyes are HUGE. His smile looks like the Grim Reaper. When I asked him, “What is HAPPENING HERE,” he said, “Mom, the photographer said to open my eyes wider and smile bigger."
Is it a perfect portrait? Nope. But every time I see it, I'm back in my kitchen, laughing until we cried over that ridiculous picture.
The best photographs don't just show us what someone looked like. They remind us who we were. They bring us back to a moment.
I want parents to look at a photograph ten years from now and instantly remember the wild, uninhibited laugh. The missing front tooth. The oh-so-serious stare out the window. The stage where they insisted on wearing rain boots with everything.
I call it emotional permanence; a photograph that doesn't just preserve a face, but preserves a feeling.
Whether I'm photographing preschoolers, seniors or families, that's what I'm chasing every single time I pick up my camera.
Not perfection.
Not forced smiles.
Just people being beautifully, wonderfully themselves.
Because someday, those ordinary little moments become the ones we miss the most.
