Fourteen Years In. I Still Get Butterflies.
I remember my first sessions. The sweaty palms. The jittery energy. The kind of nervous that lives in your chest & won't let you breathe all the way until you're inside and the camera is in your hands and happily snapping away.
That was a long time ago.
These days I walk in clear headed. Calm. Open. The thing nobody tells you about doing something for fourteen years… the nervousness doesn't disappear. It transforms.
It becomes butterflies.
And I have come to believe that those butterflies are the most important thing about my work. More than my camera. More than my education. More than any technical skill I have spent over a decade refining.
Because butterflies mean it still matters.
I photograph women at the most vulnerable, sacred moments of their lives. A brand new mother answering her door, still soft and tender, baby in arms. A woman stepping in front of my camera to finally be seen in her work, her power, her becoming.
I knock on a lot of doors.
And every single time, before that door opens, something lights up in me. A quiet excitement. A wondering. What will she look like? What will this feel like? What is she carrying into this room today?
I just want you to know that I am never just showing up. I am arriving, fully, for you.
Not long ago I photographed a client at her home gym. She trains pregnant women and new mothers, and on the day of our shoot her clients came with their babies. The room was full of strength and softness and new life all at once.
I walked out of that session and grabbed my phone to talk to the camera, the way I often do after shoots, just to capture what I'm feeling before it fades.
I was so lit up, so electric, that a fitness instructor who was watching suggested that with that much energy after a fitness shoot, maybe I should consider becoming a fitness instructor, haha.
I wasn't there to instruct. I was just a photographer who had found her thing.
That kind of energy doesn't just live in the branding sessions. It shows up just as powerfully in the most intimate work I do, in the homes of brand new mothers, in the quiet of a newborn session.
Then there was the session I almost didn't shoot.
She had been thinking about canceling. Waiting. Doing the three month shoot instead of the newborn session. I understood, because new motherhood is exhausting and vulnerable and the last thing you always feel like doing is being seen.
But she text me as soon as the baby arrived and I was there within days.
And she already knew, from her maternity shoot, that I see things a little differently. That I make images that feel more like artwork than documentation. She trusted that. She gave me room to move in that direction.
I walked out of her home knowing I had gotten so many money shots. Not just technically good… but artistically alive. The kind of images that happen when a photographer and a mother meet each other exactly where they are, and something true gets made.
and she almost canceled!!!
I think about that a lot.
Here is what fourteen years has taught me.
The butterflies are information. They are telling me that I have not gotten comfortable in the wrong direction. That the work still asks something of me, and I am still willing to give it.
After every single session, personal branding or newborn, I walk out electric. Energized in a way that nothing else in my life produces quite like this. You could stick a fork in me and get electrocuted.
That's how I know my heart is in the right place.
And if you're reading this wondering whether you should book the session, whether now is the right time, whether you're ready to be seen, I want you to know something.
I have been thinking about you for longer than you know. I will walk through your door clear headed and present and quietly lit up with the kind of excitement that fourteen years hasn't touched.
You are not an appointment on my calendar.
You are the reason I still get butterflies.
With Love,
April
April K Photo has been documenting women at moments of becoming since 2011. If you're ready to be seen, she's ready for you.
