The evolution of this photoblog and sharing the work side of what I do…starting with a portrait session.

I don’t do client sneak peeks.
Not here. Not usually that is.
And I have many reasons. Here is abridged version of how things came to be. I started photoblogging on flickr seven years ago to pull myself out of a stifling postpartum depression that had me oscillating between cold sadness and hollow indifference. I don’t have to tell you that it was a nasty place to be. While the mothering a newborn baby gig was completely new to me, I understood that I was not OK because the one blithe constant in my life, photography, had become just a job. I was a kid photographer with my very own kid and I hardly took a photo of her until she was about 3 months old. I had found flickr when she was born, started following some groups on there and finally decided to participate in March 2005. Dragging myself and everything I loved back to the surface in the process. It was my camera therapy.
Since I already had a photographic portfolio online at that point, I decided to pick a poetic nom de web…except I was not feeling all that poetic. The only thing that came to mind was my first pet -SESAME- and my mother’s maiden name -ELLIS- and so it began.
And it grew.
Daily.
As did I.
As did my child.
And my love for photographing came rushing back as I met all these new lifelong friends.
I struggled through secondary infertility and shared that journey in images while I packed up and moved my life to Australia. When the twins were born there were hundreds of friends following the adventure to welcome them to the world.
I took my story to my own blog shortly there after in 2008. As flickr got corporate, I felt myself holding back…even unjustly censored at one point.
Postpartum depression did not get the birth announcement the second time around and my camera never left my side. At the same time, the industry of blogging developed rapidly and unwittingly I had found a nice little micro niche of mommy/photoblogger, to put a label on it.

All that time I was still photographing for work. I just did not know how to slot those shoots for clients into the natural flow of things here on a regular basis. Somewhat suddenly, there were conferences and people asking about stats and unique views and something about bouncing… Blogging had become a job as well.
Then it hit me…the edges had blurred. All of this makes up the whole of my life. What I love about the blogs I read regularly is their portrayal of life. Work and home and kids and words and photography. All the heartbreakingly beautiful little bits of it stitched together with honesty.

So today I want to start sharing a bit of that other side of my life behind the camera. I can’t say that it will be a regular feature because I am just going to keep posting what feels natural to me. I don’t have a strict editorial calendar. When I do show work work, some will be portraits and others will be commercial. I don’t want to hold back this side of me as I am not complete without it.  Hopefully you can recognize the “me” in images of people you have not come to know as you have my own children.

I treat each session with as much care as I treat photographing my own family.

Isolating the details that as a mother myself, I know their mother could just stare at for the rest of her life…without blinking.

 I want to know what all children find beautiful and fascinating (even if I cringe.)

But simply I strive to get the photos I know I am lucky to be able to take of my own kids whenever I want.

So I still don’t do client sneak peeks, but this space is evolving. If you had told me seven years ago that Sesame Ellis would be a blog, I probably would have asked you what a blog was…I have given up trying to predict or even anticipate. I am just going to share, enjoy and keep expanding the long list of bloggers who inspire me.