Hi, I'm Julia! I’m a photographer located in the northwest suburbs of Illinois.

Photography isn't something I do. It's something I am. If I'm not photographing people, I'm out in the forest preserves photograpging wildlife (you can find that side of me at @the_nature_girly on Instagram). It's all-consuming, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

But it wasn't always like this.

I spent most of my twenties searching, trying hobby after hobby, looking for something that would fill that creative ache I couldn't quite name. Nothing stuck. Then, at 29, I lost my grandfather. He was a lifelong photographer, and in the fog of grief, I felt this pull I couldn't ignore. Like picking up where he left off was the most natural thing in the world, even though I had no idea what I was doing. I ordered a Canon Rebel T7 off Amazon and started figuring it out one YouTube video at a time.

Three years later, it has taken over my entire life, and I mean that in the best possible way. Every spare penny goes toward lenses, cameras, and gear. Every free hour goes toward being outside with a camera in my hand. I had no idea how much I'd been sleepwalking through the world before photography woke me up.

That's what it does, I think. It forces you to notice — the way light falls across a face, the split second before someone laughs, the things people don't even realize they're feeling until they see it frozen in a frame.

That philosophy shapes everything about how I work. I'm not a fly-on-the-wall. I'm in it with you. I bring intention and presence to every shoot, and that shows up in how the images look and how they feel. Because at the end of the day, photography is about how it felt. And I never lose sight of that.

When I'm not behind the lens, you'll find me birding, hanging with my dog, deep in trash reality TV, playing pickleball, or just being with the people I love. But I'm always, always thinking about the next shoot.