Love, love, love, love

I had the pleasure of photographing a couple of badass friends and their badass weddings over the past year and while skimming through everyone's Valentine's Day posts I realized that some of their awesome faces (and their attendees' faces) needed to be shared. #thisislove

I've been so lucky to stumble across these great peoples' paths and being near them gives me hope and excitement for the future despite everything I listen to and read in the news. When I'm down (which is often lately) I flip through these pictures from the past 12 months and realize we've got it so good to be blessed with each others' company.

Noah, Kim, Stevie, Kati, Nick, Allie, thank you so much for letting me be a part of your oh-so-kick-butt-day!

“If you love your friends, you will serve your friends. If you love your community, you will serve your community. If you love money, you will serve your money. If you love only yourself, you will serve only yourself, and you will have only yourself.”

— Stephen Colbert

See Stephen Colbert's commencement speech here.

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

---

Caritas of Austin

I just love D'Vaughncee's smile. Man. He's amazing.

For the past year I've had the amazing luck of partnering with Caritas of Austin on a number of their big projects in need of photos, such as their website redesign and their annual fundraiser.

Caritas of Austin serves an extremely critical role in the Austin community helping end homelessness with a multi-pronged approach. Here's their mission: 

"We build well-being by making sure that people have a safe home, access to healthy groceries, jobs that provide a reliable living wage, and educational opportunities to learn life skills."

Their impact over the past year has been nothing short of awesome:

Lindsey! My wonderful contact at Caritas.

• Helping to resettle 631 refugees from 16 different countries
• Helping to house 378 homeless families
• And, providing education for 830 people. 

In a time when 40.7% of the US voting population approve of Tr*mp(as of 2/7/2018), when the needs of the most vulnerable people are being actively neglected on a daily basis, the role that organizations like Caritas play in our communities are all the more important! And, the roles that we can play as volunteers using our unique skillsets (or our money) help further their mission and the people affected by it.

Samba in the upholstery workshop

This is where the pictures come in :) For their big fundraiser we created picture profiles of some of the people they've helped to find housing and jobs for. The people I photographed couldn't have been more wonderful!

Samba is a refugee migrating first out of Africa, then Russia, and then to the US.

Karen finally got a garden that she is just bringing to life.

D'Vaughncee is all kindness and smiles

And, Frank is working to stabilize things in his life after years on the move

Karen teaching us about the plants in her new garden

As you can see, in this post I've added several of my favorite pictures. I'm sorry that the pictures seem to go on forever it's just so clear how awesome these people are, how important Caritas is, and how truly negligent it is for our elected officials to refuse to empathize and understand that: we all have the same needs; that we are all the product of our opportunities and experiences; that race, income, gender, and sexual orientation have a huge say in the opportunities and experiences that we're afforded; and that we need to lift up our fellow humans to decrease inequity in our communities. 

JUMP! Go ahead and jump!

Thank you so much, Caritas of Austin, for allowing me to be a part of your work! If you'd like to volunteer with Caritas of Austin you can find opportunities here. If you don't live in Austin or would like to find other volunteer opportunities, you can head over to Volunteer Match (or just email any organization with out of the blue and let them know what you're good at and how you'd like to help... that's what I did).

Have a wonderful week and make someone's day.

---

---