Unfurl Your Myth
A deeply personal portrait experience for the woman you have become.
There are photographs that show what you looked like, and photographs that somehow hold more of you. Your humour. Your tenderness. Your self-possession. Your history. The life in your face. The deeply authentic woman beneath the roles you have carried.
Unfold Your Own Myth is an intimate, guided portrait experience created to make room for those photographs.
You do not need to know what you want yet.
INTUITIVE PORTRAITURE FOR WOMEN 40+
Maybe You Have Been Waiting for This
You may have spent years appearing in photographs beside everyone else. Family gatherings. Holidays. Weddings. Birthdays. Perhaps there are thousands of photographs of your life and surprisingly few in which you feel truly seen.
Maybe you have changed.
Maybe age has made you less interested in looking younger and much more interested in recognizing the woman who is actually here.
Or perhaps you simply have a quiet longing for one extraordinary photograph that feels unmistakably like you.
This experience begins there.
What Happens When You Stop Posing
You will be gently guided through a series of portrait movements that give different parts of you room to emerge.
We may work with movement, memory, people you love, the woman you once were, or parts of yourself that rarely have much room to come forward in ordinary life.
You never need to perform any of it. I create the structure, guide the photography and watch closely for the small shifts that happen when you stop thinking about having your picture taken.
Those fleeting expressions are often where the photograph lives.
What Might Happen in the Studio
You may arrive a little self-conscious. Most women do. We will already have talked about wardrobe, what matters to you and anything you might want to bring, so you are not walking into the studio expected to figure it all out.
Your clothes can go onto the wardrobe rail, your things can disappear into a drawer, and there will be tea or coffee waiting. Bring your slippers if you like. We may put some music on. There is time to touch up your hair or makeup, wander through the jewellery cabinets, or simply sit for a few minutes before we begin.
Then I guide you into the light.
As we move through the experience, there may be conversation, movement, laughter and quiet. I may invite you to hold one of your children or grandchildren in your awareness, remember the younger woman you once were, or spend a moment with the woman you have become.
Sometimes a face changes almost imperceptibly when someone meaningful comes to mind. Those fleeting expressions are often what I am waiting for.
If emotion comes, there is room for it. We can stop, breathe, have some tea, step outside into the woods, or simply give the moment a little space.
And because I work intuitively, an image, symbol or impression may occasionally arise while I am photographing you. If it feels relevant, I may offer it as another place for us to explore.
The structure is already held.
You do not have to manage the experience while you are inside it.
Held in the Details
This is an unhurried, private experience. Tea, coffee and something to nibble on are always close by. Your wardrobe has its own space, costume jewellery is available to borrow, and a beautifully lit mirror gives you somewhere to make small adjustments between photographs.
There is room to pause when you need to, step outside into the woods, change direction, or stay with something a little longer.
Nothing is rushed simply because the camera is waiting.
Two Ways to Experience Unfold Your Own Myth
The portrait experience is complete in itself. For women who want more time, deeper preparation and a stronger legacy component, there is also an extended immersion.
1. Unfold Your Own Myth
The Portrait Experience
$2,400 CAD + HST
A private, unhurried portrait experience built around the different expressions, relationships and parts of you we have begun to uncover together.
Includes:
Private pre-portrait conversation
Personal wardrobe and styling guidance
The complete guided studio portrait experience
Multiple wardrobe and lighting changes
Private image reveal
10 fully finished signature portraits
Framed fine-art nine-image portrait composition
“I Never Like Photographs of Myself.”
I hear some version of this from women all the time.
Usually it is followed by a list. I don't know what to do with my hands. My face does something strange when a camera comes out. I hate my neck. I've gained weight. I used to photograph better. I'm awkward. I don't know how to pose.
Most women I photograph are not models, and there is no reason they should know what to do in front of a camera. I will guide you throughout the experience, adjusting position, movement and light while giving you enough room to stop thinking quite so much about what your face and body are doing.
I am also not interested in turning you into a polished version of somebody else. Hair and makeup remain natural. Skin still looks like skin. Age belongs in the photograph. We may soften, enhance and pay attention to what serves you, but you should recognize the woman looking back.
What I am waiting for is the moment something uniquely yours comes through.
That is usually far more beautiful than anything we could manufacture.
When Intuition Enters the Experience
I have worked intuitively for most of my life, and that perception does not disappear when I pick up a camera.
Sometimes, while I am photographing you, an image, symbol, word or impression will arise. I may notice something in the way your body settles, the expression that appears when we touch a particular memory, or a connection that seems worth exploring more deeply.
When something feels relevant, I may offer it to you.
You do not have to make anything of it. Sometimes it opens an unexpected doorway. Sometimes it simply gives us a different place to stand, move, remember or look from.
The intuitive work does not tell us what the photograph should be.
It helps me listen for what may be trying to come through.
2. The Legacy
A deeper experience
$4,800 CAD + HST
For the woman who wants more room around the photography. More time to explore what is alive in her life, the people she carries, the woman she has become, and what she may want these photographs to hold for the people who come after her.
Includes everything in the Portrait Experience, plus:
Private 90-minute Intuitive Integration session before portrait day
Extended portrait experience with additional time for intuitive exploration
Space for meaningful objects, ritual and the land when they belong
The option to include one significant person for part of the experience
Food and refreshments throughout our time together
20 fully finished signature portraits
20-page 11 × 14 fine-art portrait album
Framed nine-image fine-art portrait composition
Three gift prints
Personal Legacy Reflection created after our work together
A Private Studio in the Woods
Unfold Your Own Myth takes place in my private portrait studio in Highlands East, Ontario, surrounded by the quiet of the Canadian Shield and the woods outside my door.
The studio is intimate and unhurried. And when the work wants more space, particularly within the Legacy Immersion, we can step outside and let the land become part of the experience too.
You do not need to arrive knowing which experience is right for you.
If something here has stirred your curiosity, we can begin with a conversation.
What Remains
Some photographs become more important with time.
A portrait made now may one day sit in your daughter's home, be held by a grandchild, or remind someone you love of an expression they knew by heart. It may also simply become the photograph you keep because, for once, you recognize something of yourself in it.
This is part of why I sometimes invite the people you love into the work, even when they are nowhere near the studio. A child held quietly in your awareness. A grandchild. A partner. Someone you have lost. Someone who may not even have arrived in the family yet. Each relationship can call forward a different face.
And sometimes the person belongs in the photograph with you.