2020…a year of beauty & strength

Wendy Andrews Photography 2020 Portraits

2020
Thank you for helping me see more beauty, more vulnerability, more strength.
Authentic, honest & real.

Headshot clients, Personal Branding, High School Seniors, Families, Mothers & Daughters, My 506070(80)+ project & Boudoir clients…thank you for trusting me to hold up a mirror and allow me to reflect your beautiful person back to you.

This crazy year.
Lives well-lived, yet gone too soon, the photographs remain. Sue, Julie & Lori. Honored to have photographed your strength as part of Amazing Strength-an after cancer experience. The exhibit was on display earlier in 2020.

Also in 2020, a published image, that will always bring me back to the photo session on a paddle board in the lake on her 50th birthday…because age is just a number.

Two of my portraits were on exhibit at the Warehouse Gallery. The joy in her smile makes everyone step back & exhale. I look at the next image and am immediately transported back to the river on that unusually mild October afternoon. I can feel the sting of the bug bites as I tried to hold my camera steady.

Time is an odd thing, especially in 2020.
Facebook memories shows me images of families with babies, our photo session from a few years ago, now they’re walking and talking with their own personalities! Those portraits have the ability to freeze time & make that moment available to return to.

Perhaps my senses are more acute this year.
I’ve watched a grandmother cry; a grandfather’s tears well up in his eyes at a maternity session as I showed him an image on the back of my camera…his first grandchild about to be born; a woman who stared at her portraits without words, gasping at the confidence she saw; the dad with tears streaming down his face as he unwrapped an enlargement for over his fireplace knowing his kids (young adults) will always be there; the high school senior starting to recognize their potential…

My own tears fell as I attended/drove-through three funerals this year. The lump in my throat as I saw at each one, a familiar face & expression that took a little coaching to get to, staring back at those who gathered. I’m honored my portraits are important enough to be displayed to honor each person, friend, wife & mother.

Thank you to those I’ve had the honor to photograph this year. Thanks for reaching out for your updated social media images, your dating app images, to preserve your family memories, to stop time as your high school senior prepares to launch into the world and for entrepreneurs as you launched your new businesses!

Thank you to those who have allowed me to create this year. To create art for the walls of your home & to give as gifts.

“A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it”
-EdwardSteichen 2020.

Thank you for helping me see more beauty, more vulnerability, more strength.
Authentic, honest & real.2021…I’m ready!

Presentation details

Stepping out of my comfort zone.


48 hours before I sat in front of my cell phone and did the Facebook Live broadcast (below), I had also been an Uber virgin and I had never walked down Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles at night. Having navigated the streets of LA (was booked at an AirBnb just off Skid Row) and managed to get to LAX on time via Uber, I decided Facebook live was next on my list.​

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As a Portrait photographer, I had been presenting beautiful Folio Boxes with matted prints to my clients at their Reveal session – each client falling in love with their images, purchasing them and taking them home that day in the Folio Box.  I deliver their custom enlargements and wall art as soon as their order arrives.


Then, I fell in love! The video shows me unwrapping my newest product – a Reveal Box, hand-made in Italy! The Reveal Box has a clear, picture frame style lid so the matted images can remain in the box AND the box can stand upright on a shelf as a framed display of the top image! (the old folio box was a satin covered box).

The Facebook Live video was for Portrait Photographers to see the details of this new product available only to professional photographers. I’m so excited to offer this product to my Portrait clients – it’s a stunning presentation of the gorgeous images we create together and a place for their legacy portraits to live. A gift for the next generation.

We need to exist in photographs. We need to be celebrated.

Next step out of my comfort zone? I have a few ideas!

 

Details: 11 x 14 box, holding 20 matted images.