Testimonial

We know it’s a big deal when you’re deciding on a photographer, and deciding who to invite into your family story. So we know how important it can be to hear directly from families we worked work to get a sense of what it will be like to work with us. So below is a testimonial from a dear family we recently had the honor of creating with and I cherish what they said about their experience:

From Kristin Sawyer, September 2022:

“We met Katrina during a very difficult time in our lives. We had recently learned that our oldest daughter had a brain tumor. She had been on chemo for about 5 months before my husband gifted me a family photo shoot for Mother’s Day. I was so excited about getting family photos especially trying to capture every moment with our daughter and her 2 siblings since the future was so uncertain. I was also so nervous about getting pictures and wondered how they would turn out being that we were in the middle of such a difficult, emotional time, and our oldest daughter wasn’t feeling the best.

I realized right away that Katrina was unlike any photographer I had ever met. She had such a calming presence and was able to help us relax and truly just be ourselves and play and laugh together as a family. The kids loved her immediately and had the best time playing while she took pictures. It was such a beautiful fun time as a family and the pictures she captured were incredible! I can’t tell you what it meant to look at our daughter’s face and see the deep, bright, overflowing joy during such a dark difficult time! It brought so much joy and hope to look at those pictures.

About a year later Katrina and Mark came to our home and worked with us to make a beautiful family film. Our daughter had finished a year of chemo at this point and had been off of treatment for about 5 months.The kids were SO excited that Katrina was coming back to see us and couldn’t wait to play and show her all their toys and favorite things to do! Mark was just as lovely as Katrina. They both are such amazing, talented people who are able to capture such pure, true beauty often in the smallest things that often get missed by others. We had a lovely afternoon playing, dancing, and laughing while they captured video. Katrina asked me to share some photos and video of the last year for her to include in the family film.

When we received the family film from Katrina and Mark it brought tears to my eyes. It was so beautiful. We watched it over and over again.

I realized as we were watching it that I hadn’t really shown our daughter any of the photos or videos I took when she was at the hospital. I think seeing them really made an impact on her. She said “Mom, I don’t know why and this is going to sound weird but I really like seeing those pictures of me at the hospital.” I asked her if it made her feel proud of how brave she was and she said it did! I think it helped her process a little bit of it in a way.

I think that photos and video can definitely help process and help heal in a way! That is what Katrina and Mark’s photos and video have done for me! The photos during our daughter’s treatment showed me that her joy (and ours) wasn’t lost and still shined so bright. And the video was so beautiful. To see that we still had so many beautiful moments and memories that were made during such a challenging, difficult year was really inspiring and special.

Thank you Katrina and Mark for finding beauty in the storm!”

-Kristin Sawyer, Durham, North Carolina

You can see their Family Film below: