Hello! My name is Cari - I am a daughter, sister, wife and mama. My family is everything to me! I inherited my unfiltered/talk-too-much/never-give-up attitude from my mother and my gentle, yet hard-working attitude from my dad. They taught me to love and help others. I volunteer a lot of my time to helping others, while I wish I was smart enough to cure cancer, my strong suit is photography. So, I volunteer with families unfortunately dealing with childhood cancer, through Make-A-Wish and The Gold Hope Project. I also volunteer making and distributing lunches for the homeless. My full time job is being a mama to my two amazing boys, Pokemon hunting, baseball and lego building (and currently remote learning). I do photography around their schedule when I can. I am, however, completely awful with communication...I'm bad at texting, emailing and voicemails, so I apologize ahead of time...I am still living in the 80's/90's with my communication skills. 

I love a genuine laugh, a happy smile, a proud brother/sister looking at their sibling...those are the moments I live for.  My goal is to create an image that you see on your wall daily and smile.  Photography helps you remember happy times.  I look at the photos on my wall EVERY SINGLE day.  

My history, if you're interested:
I graduated from Arizona State University in 2007 with a BA in Fine Art Photography. I learned on film cameras and was even able to print color film photos, which laid the ground work for the way I work now.  Digital photography was still new when I was in college, so everything I've learned in Lightroom and Photoshop have been self taught.  I worked as a cocktail waitress and bartender throughout college.  Once I graduated, opening a business wasn't feasible so I became a customer service representative then accountant assistant at a medical goods company.  
I've always loved photography, since I was a child. Yearbook was one of my favorite classes in school. I tried several different majors in college, but my mom encouraged me to follow my passion. So, I changed my major to Fine Art Photography and didn't look back.

It wasn't until I had my first child that I picked my camera back up. My husband and I took our son to a studio when he was a couple months old to get his photos taken. We received the photos and they didn't even look like him! They had a "cheap" price to get us in the door, but then everything else was outrageous...for photos that were rigid, and not edited...they didn't care about making a product that was unique or if he smiled or really anything. They plopped him down, snapped 20 photos and that was that. I left with a newfound determination. I was going to relearn the things I had forgotten in the years I'd been out of school. I was going to teach myself Photoshop. I was going to take my son's photos.

After I got the hang of my camera again and an understanding of Lightroom and Photoshop, I started volunteering as a second shooter for weddings.  What's better than hands on learning?  I did that for several years before I started booking my own, I would live with incredible guilt if I ruined someone's wedding!  

So now, years later, I've learned what I'm good at...and what I'm not.