Professional Photographer Melissa Leeper Leeper Photo Beverly Hills MI Michigan 48025 United States Photography

Here is where the story unfolds. Here is where the tale is told . . .

I love that every day for a short while I get to be a part of someone else’s family. It’s the children I get to photograph from the very beginning and year after year that most touch my soul. I get to watch them grow and my family grows along with them. My time with them is brief, yet it is easy to see their qualities as only a mother would see. The kids open to me and for a moment they are mine, caught on film and in my heart forever.

I think as parents, we forget over time the reasons a particular age or stage our children go thorough is hard. We become engrossed in getting through the next difficult phase and the one after that as well. Often times, we forget the sounds of a child learning to say “no!” or the evil laugh that tells you from another room that she is torturing the dog again. It is only the spark in her eye or the smirk on her face captured in a photograph that remains to remind us of the childhood that has raced by in the blink of an eye.
At times, my images have a soft or grainy look to them. It's what remains of a memory as it starts to disintegrate and fade over time. Time has a tendency to distort our memory of the reality, leaving only the romantic notion that all was well, perfect and beautiful all of the time. Freshly scrubbed children that were a mother’s nightmare just moments before are captured on film for all time. What is left is the image scrubbed clean and the dirt of the day faded away.

In my recent collage work, I have rekindled a love I had as a child for paper dolls, scissors and glue. The images get layered with paint, clippings and text until the subjects become more alive. Most of my days are like a second chance at my own childhood. I get a do over! I get to play with the kids and get messy. What could be better! I get to be surrounded by loving and supportive people. I have a cheerleader that yells “yea mama!” When I run up the steepest hills, my biggest fan reminds me it’s all worth it! How can I go wrong? How could I let them down? I can’t! So as they cheer and encourage, I push on creating from my own life experiences.