welcome — a peek into my world
If you read my about page, I expressed a few pieces of my heart and story with you already. But as a storyteller, I feel it’s my vocation to share a bit deeper.
So here’s to storytelling, expression, connection, and being friends <3
Behind the Lens
a little about me..
I was born in Solvang, a quaint Danish town nestled inland on California’s central coast. I spent my childhood running around barefoot with my brothers, eating day old pastries from the local baker, and sliding down hills on cardboard boxes until the whistle of our mom called us home. I grew up in the health food store she managed, talking to the curious folks who too ate their dinner at the deli. It was always an organic, nourishing meal, accompanied by the sound of my moms vibrant laugh, as Cat Stevens played in the background.
To this day, the smell of a health food store always feels like home <3
When I was eight my family moved to the Big Island of Hawaii. My mother is half Hawaiian and my father is a surfer so it was only a matter of time. I spent the rest of my years exploring the island, becoming a fish, and developing a deep bond to nature. I first fell in love with photography as a kid. My grandpa was a photographer and taught me my way around a camera. He gave me my first DSLR at the age of 12 and I probably took about 20 thousand photos on that camera until it broke in my underwater housing. I couldn’t afford a new camera so I borrowed (stole) my father’s SLR and fell in love with film. Being the strong introvert that I was, it became my way of connecting to others and expressing myself. I was through and through a listener. So quiet that sometimes you’d forget I was there. But that's what I loved, being able to capture the intimate aspects of someone that others often missed. I loved seeing the essence of people, the quirks and the passion. I didn’t have a way with words at that time but photographs were often my way of saying “i love you. i see you. i hear you.”
I’m married to my lover, Caleb. He’s my first crush, first kiss, one and only love.
Before we met, I never had an interest in marriage. I planned to be a single nomad living in a van, or some foreign country with a dozen cats. But our friendship grew beyond young love. I’ll never forget the moment we realized we were soul mates — even at a young age we just knew. It felt as if we had always known each other and couldn’t fathom life without the other.
the night before we moved away from Hawaii. on the road we met, fell in love, and married each other on. captured by the lovely India Earl
first day as husband and wife — Kona, Hawaii
captured by the lovely Amber French
We met when we were 15. He was homeless at the time, living on the beach, eating tuna off his surf fins. Yet if you spoke with him about his life, you’d never know anything was hard because he was so stoked to have such a “short commute” to the surf. His situation pulled on my brother’s heartstrings, who eventually brought Caleb and his brother home to my parents, and the rest was history from there.
They became chosen family from that point forward.
We fell in love and the boys officially became family on a beautiful day in December of 2013 ♡
We spent our first 8 years of marriage living in Hawaii, traveling the world, and photographing love together. Those years will always be so precious to me. We had the privilege in raising some of our siblings as our own. So many wonderful years of a full house with late night deep talks, spontaneous dance parties, and laughter filling the kitchen. Family camp trips, moonlit skating at the park, midnight ice cream runs, and binging Netflix on accident regularly. It was a simple yet beautifully challenging part of life, where Caleb and I discovered new layers of each other in each role we played as a young couple.
Now life is pretty quiet and at times we even feel like newlyweds. We moved across the ocean to the Santa Cruz mountains in the summer of 2022 and live in a quaint little cabin on a few acres of land with our cat Mazzy. At times we feel as if our home is an empty nest. We have more than enough time for ourselves and each other. But we also welcome this new chapter of our life together. We often spend our mornings eating breakfast in the sun or walking on the trails near our home. We go on daily dates to the river and beaches nearby, even if all we can squeeze in is a quick sunset dinner together. We get to continuously meet deeper layers of ourselves and versions of each other that we hadn’t seen since childhood. It seems like life is a big spiral. You constantly come back to things you’ve always known to see deeper truths and meaning. We’re living in our era of learning and exploration — and the last 10 years have only made this time in our life much more rich and meaningful.
what i love..
I love discovery : unearthing myself, exploring places, meeting humans, learning history, discovering a new wonderful element of life. I suppose the love for bringing something to light explains my life long obsession with psychology. I love plants and herbalism. I love living in harmony with the cycles of nature. I love my cats who have always been my closest companions. Mazzy, my russian blue is the most intuitive and attentive soul I’ve ever met. I think it’s beautifully wild that we can connect to another creature and form such an intense emotional bond. That is why I love animals. It’s a humbling experience where we remember our truest nature. I fall in love with life daily. I love this wonderful earth and the Creator I deeply admire. I love discovering love in all of its wild forms and unexpected places.
What Inspires Me
emotion, depth, connection, and wonder..
I feel romantic about life, spending most of my time in awe. From observing the woodland animals outside my window to admiring the cycles of light and shadow throughout the day, I can’t help but notice the beauty and wonder all around. My earliest memories are gazing at butterflies. I used to sit in our little patio watching them fly from flower to flower. I would get so lost in them (literally) that my parents would panic when they realized their four year old had walked off following a butterfly. In all of my families endeavors at teaching me safety, I still lose myself deeply to nature. The family joke is that I will die eating a mushroom I misidentified or petting something I shouldn’t.
Nature has my deepest affections — various landscapes, the stars, the woods, and the animals that reside here. But especially water — all currents and bodies of water. Music is my love language — song writing, playing guitar, and the native american flute are some other expressions of my soul. I love to create playlists based off of different feelings, and often dance to them all day. Or lay on the floor at night, staring at my galaxy lights, while listening to curated music for hours. I’m a creature of the night — it’s often felt like a love affair. I’ve always been drawn to the silence, the mystery, and the unknown. I create my deepest art from this place. I’m drawn into and inspired by places that unleash the raw, wild, and feral parts of being human.
and lastly,
I love collecting things and turning them into art. Making stained glass from pieces of nature in an earth friendly way is a big passion of mine. I love reading and getting lost in a good novel. And writing poetry — the honest expression and very core of the human experience. The words we’re often afraid to say; the words that feel like a companion when you read them.
Movement is the most beautiful form of expression to me — it’s like poetry in motion. My mother was a dancer, and I’ve always found the embodiment of a dancer to be the most beautiful form of storytelling. Being both Native Hawaiian and Native American, I come from a line of indigenous cultures that share a similarity in using dance as the legacy of storytelling, which inspires me to my very core. Lately, I’ve been exploring and embodying this aspect of storytelling myself, and it feels like the inherent birthright of all humanity.
These are the things that light me up and move my soul towards creating. I hope you enjoyed a deeper view into this lil world of mine. And of course, I’d love to hear your story as well. So let’s be penpals <3
xx Cece
