Golden Hour at Mount Tabor | Portland Family Photography
Some relationships you don't take for granted.
Caitlin and I met as coworkers back in 2009, when I was working in the social work field. We became friends the way you do when you're in that kind of work — quickly, genuinely, out of necessity and shared humanity. When she and Matt got engaged, she trusted me with her first session. I had no idea then that I'd still be photographing them fifteen years later. That I'd watch them get married, grow into parents, and show up to sessions with three kids who have their eyes and their energy and their easy, genuine laughs.
That's the part of this job nobody tells you about. The long game. The way a family unfolds over years of sessions — maternity, newborns, first birthdays, headshots, and then suddenly you're at Mount Tabor on a November afternoon, and the light is doing something almost unreasonable through the trees, and their youngest is running in circles, and you think: I get to do this.
Mount Tabor Park is one of Portland's most beautiful locations for a fall family session. Tucked into Southeast Portland, the park sits on the only extinct volcano within city limits in the contiguous United States — which sounds dramatic, but mostly it means rolling paths, towering evergreens, and in November, an absolutely ridiculous amount of golden light filtering through the last of the season's leaves. It photographs like a dream.
Caitlin and Matt are naturals in front of the camera at this point — which, after fifteen years, makes sense. But what I love most is that it's not polish. It's comfort. They're not performing for the camera; they're just themselves, pulling kids close, cracking each other up, stealing a quiet moment between the chaos. That's what timeless images are made of. Not perfect stillness — real life, well-lit.
To Caitlin, Matt, and your three — thank you for letting me keep showing up. Here's to the next chapter.
