here.today » detroit, ann arbor, toledo . fine art wedding and portrait photographer melissa squires day to day blog companion

Last year I looked back on what I’d shot and thought no way, it can’t get better and then this year I looked back on 2012 and was so happy to say that it does, it only get’s lovelier, different, more wonderful.  I strive to keep my work fresh, always growing.  That is the key I think to loving what you do, enthusiasm and a striving to always learn.  Each wedding informs the next, each portrait session, each commercial shoot, every bit of personal work I do feeds the rest.  I’m reading a book right now called “The Dude and the Zen Master” and the last thing I thought I’d discover in it’s pages was the secret to making this happen.  Jeff Bridges points out that with movies, no matter how often you rehearse you always have to come back to a place of emptiness, where everything is new.  I’m not photographing a child laughing, I’m photographing this child, laughing now.  I’m not photographing a bride coming down the asile, I’m photographing this bride who is coming down the asile now.  Each time it’s new, each time it’s unique, each time it’s magic and it’s my joy to attempt to capture this moment, right here.

I’ve been featured in magazines, the Huffington post (twice), interviewed on BBC, my images have been shared on Good Morning America and I’ve made it to quite a few blogs, and that’s just this year alone (one of these days I’ll make a page on the website celebrating all that goodness) but the best, most rewarding and validating thing for me is to get a letter, or a text, an email or a voice mail telling me how happy a client is with their images.  A mom who can’t pick her album images because each one is so special to her, a bride and groom who cried together while looking at their images; re-living the joy of their wedding day, a woman who can now see herself not as she does when she is judging herself in the mirror but how we see her, how beautiful she really is.  That means the world to me.

So once again, I say it a lot, thank you for letting me, us, (because Sean and Kerri are a huge part of what I do) be part of so many moments, it’s an honor each and every time and I don’t take it for granted.    I made myself stop picking images for this post or it would have been too long, here are just a few of the images that made 2012 so special.