Becoming | A Maternity Session at Camassia Natural Area | West Linn, Oregon

Mar 20

Some clients find you at the beginning of their story. Erin and LeFoster found me at one of the quietest, most intimate chapters of theirs — a courthouse wedding, just the two of them and their closest family and friends making it official. I felt lucky to be there. Years later, when they reached out again, I felt something even more than that.

They were expecting.

There is something singular about being trusted with a family's milestones across time. To photograph the same two people — first on the threshold of their marriage, and now on the edge of parenthood — is a gift I don't take lightly. When Erin and LeFoster asked me to capture their maternity session, my answer was a full and immediate yes.

"Named for the common camas that blooms in violet drifts each spring, this rocky plateau has been shaped by ancient floods and kept wild by careful hands."

We chose Camassia Natural Area in West Linn — a 26-acre preserve managed by The Nature Conservancy, sculpted thousands of years ago by the Bretz Floods that carved the Willamette Valley. The preserve hosts over 400 plant species on its rocky plateau, and in the right light, it reads less like a park and more like a painting no one was supposed to find.

The boardwalk through the wet meadows, the moss-covered basalt, the canopy of Oregon white oaks — everything there has a quality of having been waiting. Waiting for the right season, the right morning, the right two people walking through it.

Erin moved through the preserve with the kind of ease that comes from feeling fully, quietly certain. LeFoster stayed close — a hand at her back, a glance that said everything without needing to say anything at all. They are the kind of couple who fill silence beautifully.

We wandered the loop trail as the light softened and filtered through the oak canopy. I kept thinking about the word becoming — how it applies to a landscape in spring, to a couple growing into parenthood, to the tiny life they were already carrying and already loving.