mama first.
camera girl.
husband obsessed .
Hi y’all! I’m Chanze. Texas Wedding and Motherhood Photographer, mom of two, completely obsessed with my husband of 13 years, and firmly believe your people come before everything else. Our house is usually loud, chaotic, covered in pet hair, fueled by beer and dark humor, and somehow still full of so much love in the middle of all the mess. Honestly, that’s probably why storytelling means so much to me in the first place!
Weddings will always be my thing. There’s something about getting invited into one of the biggest, most emotional seasons of someone’s life that I’ll never take for granted. Since 2014, these moments have been at the center of it all, newlyweds, growing mamas, and those fleeting newborn days. They pass so quickly, and that’s why they deserve to be held onto in a way that lasts.
I’ve been right where you are. I know just how quickly these moments pass, the kind you think you’ll remember forever, but somehow fade with time. The tiny details, the quiet in-between glances, the way it all felt in that exact season of life… it slips by faster than we ever expect. That’s exactly why this means so much to me. It’s about freezing those fleeting moments and turning them into something tangible, something you can come back to, feel again, and hold onto for years to come! ❤︎
Some Personal Work
You won’t find anyone more obsessed with love.
MY JOURNEY
Got my first camera (thanks mama)
For years, I begged my mom for an Olympus camera. Back then, spending $600 on something like that wasn’t a quick or easy decision, so I had learned not to expect it anytime soon. But the day I tore open that present and saw my very own DSLR sitting there, everything changed. I don’t think I even made it through the rest of the day before heading outside with it in my hands. I went on a hike and photographed absolutely everything I could find, the light through the trees, little details on the trail, bugs, weird looking flowers/plants, anything that caught my eye. I filled the memory card so fast that I had to run home twice just to empty it before heading right back out again.
The following few years, that camera went absolutely everywhere with me. It survived my MySpace and Tumblr era, rode around in the passenger seat with me, got tossed into backpacks, and somehow made it through every phase of growing up alongside me. I started photographing local bands for $20 a show just so I could have a little spending money to hang out with my friends on the weekends.
I convinced my friends to let me do photoshoots constantly, in random fields, parking lots, abandoned places, wherever we could think of. Looking back, the photos were honestly terrible, but they were mine, and every bad photo was teaching me something. For years, I shot completely on auto because I had no idea what any of the settings actually meant. Then one night, while scrolling Tumblr, I stumbled across an article about shooting in manual mode, and something finally clicked.
Suddenly photography stopped feeling like luck and started feeling intentional. I became obsessed with understanding light, movement, and emotion, not just capturing what something looked like, but what it felt like to be there. That little camera turned into the thing that quietly followed me through every stage of life, long before I ever realized it would someday become my career.
2009 vaca with my mama
2012 at my first bar with my mama
I met my husband!
If you’d like to know the story about how we met, scroll down to the next section! <3
Got my camera out of storage!
When I moved out of my parents house in 2012, I left a lot of little pieces of my old life behind without really thinking twice about it. One of those things was my camera. The battery charger had broken, so the camera ended up packed away while I focused on figuring out adulthood and surviving on my own.
Not long after, my parents moved to Houston, and eventually I followed them there in 2013. Everything felt new and uncertain at the time. New city, new routines, not a lot of money, and honestly just trying to make things work however I could. My mom told me I could go through some storage and take a few things with me, so I grabbed my grandma’s coffee table, a few decorations, and this random box full of odds and ends from my old room.
Buried in that box was my camera.
I remember pulling it out almost like reconnecting with an old version of myself I hadn’t seen in a while. At some point, I ordered a new charger for it, mostly on a whim, not really realizing what it would turn into. Once it powered back on, I started bringing it with me everywhere again. I began doing little photo sessions on the side to make extra money because after moving to Houston, I needed every dollar I could get.
Those sessions were small. mostly with friends, or couples, anyone willing to let me practice. I was so happy to doing photography again, I just wanted to have fun and create!
We welcomed our first baby!
When my husband and I welcomed our oldest daughter, Paislee, everything shifted. Life suddenly felt faster, louder, more exhausting, and somehow more beautiful all at the same time. I was stepping into motherhood while still trying to figure out who I was creatively, and without even realizing it, photography became the way I held onto all of it. Her entire first year of life was basically spent with a camera pointed in her direction. Every little expression, every sleepy yawn, every tiny hand wrapped around my finger, I photographed all of it. I had never really photographed babies before then. Up until that point, most of my experience had been learning how to work weddings, seniors, headshots, couples, I knew how to pose people, chase good light, and capture moments, but photographing a baby, especially my baby, felt completely different.
It was not polished or perfect in the beginning. Half the time there were burp cloths in the background, laundry piles shoved out of frame, or me trying to calm a crying baby while balancing a camera in one hand. But in the middle of all those chaotic little moments, I fell completely in love with documenting her. She became my tiny built in model, and without knowing it, she taught me how to slow down and take it in.
I photographed her constantly. On the bed near the window when the morning light poured in. In our front yard just playing in the dirt. Covered in spaghetti sauce. Sleeping on my chest. Sitting in any and every basket she would fit in.. Looking back now, those photos feel less like sessions and more like pieces of memory I was trying desperately to hold onto before they disappeared. At the same time, I was still taking on whatever work I could get. I branched out on my own and photographed a few weddings in 2015, family sessions, seniors, couples, literally anything people would hire me for. My goal was simple. I wanted to stay home with my daughter while still contributing financially however I could. Some months were stressful, and some seasons felt like I was constantly juggling motherhood, editing late into the night, and trying to build something sustainable from scratch.
But that season taught me so much. It taught me how to work under pressure, how to adapt, how to create in chaos, and most importantly, how deeply meaningful photography could actually be when it felt personal. It stopped being just about taking pretty photos. It became about preserving connection, emotion, and the fleeting little moments people do not realize they will miss someday until they are gone.
I got married!
By the time Justin and I got married, Paislee was already there beside us through it all, and honestly, I would not have wanted it any other way. She was not just part of our wedding day, she was part of our story long before we ever stood up there together. People sometimes ask what I remember most from my wedding day, and the truth is, almost everything else feels like a blur now. The day moved so fast. One second I was getting ready, the next I was walking down the aisle, and before I knew it the night was over. Weddings are funny like that when it is your own. You spend months planning every detail, and then suddenly it all rushes by in the span of a few hours.
But one moment stayed perfectly clear in my mind.
Justin dancing with Paislee.
I can still picture it so vividly. My little girl and her daddy out on the dance floor together, completely in their own world while everything else around them faded into the background. Watching the two people I loved most dancing together at our wedding felt like watching my whole heart exist outside of my body.
That memory became one of the biggest reminders of why photographs matter so much to me. The day itself can move fast, details can fade, but the feelings stay when they are captured honestly.
Around that same season of life, I had made my own website, my own socials for my business.. It wasn’t just word of mouth, quick bookings anymore… I was booking weddings like hot cakes. Granted back then, I charged like $500 for a full wedding day LOL but all of the feedback and reviews I received all said the same thing. “We love how she connected with us, and with our families.” I was making a name for myself!
I also got a huge camera upgrade for Christmas in 2015, and that was a total game changer! I had my first full frame camera, with 3 lenses, and a whole ass lighting kit! I was showing up by myself, carrying all that new gear, directing timelines, handling the pressure, chatting with moms and grandmas and realizing I genuinely loved every second of it. The nerves, the excitement, the chaos of wedding mornings, the emotional vows, packed dance floors, golden hour portraits, all of it completely lit something up inside of me.
The more weddings I photographed, the more I realized this was not just some side hobby I picked up years ago with a camera I begged my mom for. This could actually become something bigger. Something real.
I became obsessed with storytelling. Not just the posed moments, but the in between ones. Every wedding taught me something new, and with every gallery I delivered, I felt more certain that this was exactly what I was meant to be doing.
This was one of the first weddings I shot after I got my new gear. ^^^
We welcomed our
second baby!
When my husband and I welcomed our youngest, Cade, another shift happened in me creatively. Motherhood already had such a hold on my heart after having Paislee, but after Cade was born, it became even deeper. I felt completely consumed in the best way by those early years of raising babies. The tiny details, the sleepless nights, the sticky fingers, the constant chaos, all of it felt important to remember. I wanted to document every second of it. Not just the big milestones people usually celebrate, but the quiet everyday moments too. The rocking to sleep. The way little hands reached for me without thinking. The toys scattered across the living room floor. The exhaustion mixed with overwhelming love. I realized those were the moments I never wanted to forget.
Around that time, I started creating self portraits with my babies. I would prop up my camera somewhere in the house, or the park nearby and step into the frame with them instead of always being the one behind the lens. Looking back now, those photos are still some of my favorites I have ever taken. They were imperfect and emotional and real. I love being their mom, and I loved documenting motherhood in a way that felt honest instead of overly posed or polished. If you had a baby or a small child during that season of my life, there was a very good chance I was trying to get you in front of my camera. I became completely drawn to photographing mothers with their children. I wanted women to have proof that they were there too. Proof of the way their babies looked at them, clung to them, loved them. I think becoming a mother myself changed the way I saw photography entirely. It made me more emotional, more observant, and more aware of how fleeting life really is. That same year, I also stepped into birth photography for the first time. I was fascinated by the strength and emotion of it all. Birth felt like the rawest form of storytelling possible, and I wanted to document those first moments families would never get back.
But that season was short lived.
During one birth, I witnessed a baby pass away unexpectedly, shortly after delivery. It completely shattered me. I do not think there are words strong enough to explain what it felt like to stand in a room that had moments before been filled with anticipation and hope, only for everything to suddenly shift into grief and true heartbreak. What made it even harder was that it reopened wounds I was already carrying myself. After experiencing my own loss, photographing motherhood and birth had always felt emotional to me because I knew how precious those moments were, but after witnessing that loss in person, I could no longer separate the beauty from the fear of losing it. Every laboring mother became someone I worried for. Every delivery room carried a heaviness afterward that I could not shake. Instead of being able to stay fully present creatively, my heart stayed guarded, almost bracing for heartbreak before anything had even happened.
I never photographed another birth after that. Not because I did not see the beauty in it anymore, but because I saw too much of the fragility too. That experience changed me deeply and reminded me, once again, why preserving moments matters so much. It was a wild time, but gosh it was amazing.
We moved from Houston to Austin!
Shortly after Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, life felt like it flipped upside down for us. What started as storm damage eventually turned into mold issues in our home, and things got bad fast. We found ourselves having to pack up and leave quicker than we ever expected, trying to figure things out one step at a time while also raising babies in the middle of all the uncertainty. It was one of those seasons where nothing felt stable, and every decision felt huge.
For a few months, my husband and I went back and forth about what we wanted to do next. Stay close to what we knew or start over somewhere new. Eventually, after a lot of conversations and probably a little fear mixed with hope, we decided to make the move to Austin. At the time, I do not think either of us imagined it would become home the way it has. We thought maybe it would just be temporary, a fresh start for a little while until we figured things out.
But the second we settled into the area we moved to, we fell completely in love with it. The slower mornings, the community, the beauty of the Hill Country, the way life started feeling a little lighter again. Over time, Austin became woven into our story in a way we never expected.
Now here we are seven years later, raising babies that somehow are not babies anymore. Watching them head into middle school and third grade feels surreal because it still feels like yesterday they were tiny enough to fit on my hip while I edited sessions late at night. We built a life here. Our memories are here. I truly cannot imagine leaving now.
Around the same time, my photography career was growing faster than I ever expected. 2019 became the year of weddings for me. I think I photographed around 35 weddings that year, maybe more. Every weekend was another wedding day, another couple, another timeline, another gallery waiting to be edited when I got home. At first, I loved the momentum of it all. I loved the excitement and the constant movement. But eventually, I pushed myself way too hard. I was balancing motherhood, editing, traveling to Houston for half of them, family life, and trying to keep up with the demand all at once. I hit a point where I realized I was completely overwhelming myself and heading straight toward burnout.
So I made a huge shift.
I stopped booking weddings as heavily toward the end of the year (after probably 20 trips to Houston, in a 5 month span) and started leaning fully into motherhood photography instead. Maternity sessions, newborns, mama and me sessions, families, I wanted all of it. I was hungry for anything that reflected motherhood and connection because those were the stories that resonated with me the deepest.
I wanted to photograph the kind of moments I knew mothers would ache to remember someday. That season reminded me why I fell in love with photography in the first place. Not for perfection or performance, but for preserving life exactly as it feels while you are in it.
I opened up my studio!
Back in 2008, if someone would have told me where photography would take me by this time, I never would have believed them. Back then, photography felt like this thing I loved deeply but never fully believed could become a real career, I imagined America’s Next Top Model’s Nigel Barker as what a real photographer looked like. I never could have imagined myself designing an entire studio space that was mine. At that point in my life, I was just a teenager carrying a camera around everywhere, trying to figure out light and editing through Tumblr tutorials and trial and error. The idea that one day people would trust me to preserve some of the most important seasons of their lives felt impossible.
Designing a studio space felt like one of the biggest full circle moments of my life. Walking into an empty space and realizing I could turn it into something completely my own lit something up inside of me creatively. I poured everything into it. Every corner, every setup, every detail was created with intention. I wanted the space to feel warm and inviting and inspiring the second someone walked through the door. Once I started, it honestly felt like there was no slowing me down. I had this huge creative fire inside of me and a million ideas constantly running through my head. I wanted to build worlds people could step into. I wanted my sessions to feel less like traditional portraits and more like art mixed with storytelling. I stayed up late noting ideas, moving shit around, ordering fabrics and props, dreaming up concepts I could bring to life for my clients.
(Somewhere along the way, everything got a little orange… It was short lived thankfully but yeah… Sorry to those I turned into an Oompa Loompa while experimenting LOL)
By then, I had taken a step back from weddings. I had not booked more than 5 in a year because my focus had shifted entirely toward motherhood and newborn photography. I knew what it felt like to crave photographs where mothers existed too instead of always standing behind the camera. I started building a client closet filled with pieces I personally loved because I wanted women to feel beautiful and taken care of when they came to see me. I no longer wanted to rely solely on Pinterest inspiration or recreate someone else’s vision. Instead, I started designing my own sets and concepts from scratch. I became obsessed with creating imagery that felt emotional, artistic, and uniquely mine. For the first time, I felt fully confident in my creative voice. I loved the freedom that came with being completely hands on and in control of what I wanted to create. Every session became an opportunity to bring an idea in my head to life exactly the way I envisioned it. It no longer felt like I was just taking photos. I was building experiences. I was creating art out of motherhood, connection, softness, chaos, and love. And after years of slowly finding my footing, I finally felt like I had truly found where I belonged. People knew who I was, I was interviewing, showcased on blogs and forums. It was amazing don’t get me wrong…
But something was still missing.
The burn out…
This is very much who I am as a person. I dream big, I get excited easily, and if something sparks my interest creatively, I want to dive head first into it. For a long time, I struggled to say no to anything. New ideas, new projects, more sessions, more weddings, more concepts, I wanted to do all of it.
But eventually, constantly pouring from an empty cup caught up to me. I found myself overwhelmed again, creatively exhausted, emotionally drained, and trying to carry way more than I should have been carrying on my own. It also did not help that, behind the scenes, our family had gone through a deeply traumatic experience during that season of life. At that point, I honestly felt like I was just trying to survive mentally while still showing up for everyone around me.
By the beginning of 2023, I knew something had to change. I knew I had to put SOMETHING on the back burner to get through it, and it wasn’t going to be my family, or myself…
So the first half of that year became a reset for me in every possible way. I stepped back from constantly creating, constantly producing, and constantly saying yes. I gave myself room to breathe for the first time in a long time. Once I caught up on galleries I spent more time at home, more time with my kids, more time relaxing and trying different things that didn’t involved photography, or socializing. I took more photos of the kids, and our kitty and slowly, somewhere around the summer of 2023, I felt some excitement when I got a text from a photographer friend, asking if I could second shoot for them that weekend. It had been almost 6 months since I had photographed anything other than my life, I got excited after agreeing because this means I wouldn’t be leading… I’d be able to solely just be creative without the pressure of running the whole show. Not forced creativity or burnout creativity where you are just trying to keep up, but genuine inspiration. The kind that makes you excited to pick up your camera again.
Ironically, weddings played a huge role in helping me find that part of myself again. Later that year, I had started booking weddings again because I realized how much I genuinely missed them. After years of building elaborate motherhood sets, collecting props, curating wardrobes, and constantly designing concepts from scratch, I was craving simplicity again. Honestly, if you could have seen the amount of props and wardrobe pieces I had collected over the years, you probably would have been overwhelmed too.
Weddings brought me back to the beginning, storytelling in its rawest form. Real people, real emotion, real moments unfolding naturally in front of me without needing to create every detail myself. I remembered how much I loved the unpredictability of wedding days and the emotional connection that came with them. I intentionally slowed down all of 2024, just keeping that spark alive because I was scared I would lose it again. I only booked a handful of sessions each month and limited myself to one wedding per month. For the first time in a long time, I started setting actual boundaries with myself instead of constantly pushing past my limits. I stopped saying yes out of guilt or fear that turning something down would hurt my business and started taking on the sessions and weddings that genuinely meant something to me, with people I truly connected with. I started making it a priority to truly connect with couples before signing a wedding contract. I wanted to know who they were, how they loved each other, what mattered to them, and whether we genuinely fit together creatively and personally.
Thankfully, this was also the era where Zoom and Google Meet had become completely normal, which honestly made that process so much easier. Instead of trying to coordinate coffee shops and lunches with couples spread all across Texas, we could hop on a video call and immediately connect face to face from wherever we were. Not that I do not love meeting people in person because I absolutely do, but being able to build those relationships virtually changed everything for me and my business.
So thank you, Covid, for at least giving us that little silver lining!
The comeback!
I will never lie about this part. My babies have always been my main focus, and they always will be. Even if they aren’t quite babies anymore. Every decision I have made throughout my career has somehow centered around them in one way or another. They are the reason I pushed so hard, the reason I stayed up editing late at night, the reason I kept going even during seasons where I wanted to quit completely.
When 2022 hit, life mentally just completely knocked me on my ass. I had no idea what anxiety could feel like, or depression. I spent a huge portion of that year in denial about how badly I was struggling. I kept trying to push through it, stay productive, keep creating, keep showing up, hoping eventually I would just snap out of it. But healing does not work like that.
A lot of 2023/24 became about therapy, slowing down, and finally facing things I had spent 2 decades avoiding emotionally. It was uncomfortable and messy at times, but it was necessary. For the first time in a long time, I stopped trying to outrun my own exhaustion and started actually taking care of myself mentally too.
Then 2025 came, I felt lighter again. More present. More grounded in who I was as a woman, a wife, a mother, and an artist. My husband and I truly reconnected during that season too, and I do not think I realized how badly we both needed that until it happened. Somewhere between raising babies, building careers, surviving hard seasons, and simply trying to make it through life, it is easy to lose pieces of yourselves for a while and kind of become roommates. We found each other again in the middle of it all. I found so much peace in the simplest things. Spending quality time with my husband. Being fully present with my kids. Creating work that actually inspired me instead of work that only exhausted me.
Photography has never just been a job for me. It is genuinely part of who I am. It has followed me through every version of myself, from being a teenager with a camera attached to her hip, to becoming a mother desperate to freeze time before her babies grew up too fast, to the woman I am now doing what makes ME happy and what I want to share with the world.
And now that my kids are getting older, and they’re not excited to dress up and go on an adventure with mom and her camera… We are getting farther and farther away from the baby years, and I would give absolutely anything to go back to them being babies, for just one day. I would hold them a little longer, soak in every little detail, and memorize the sound of their tiny voices all over again. I think that is why I could never fully box myself into photographing just one thing. Weddings, newborns, families, motherhood, they all tell pieces of the same story to me.
Photography has followed me through every stage of my own life, so naturally I became drawn to documenting every stage for other people too. A lot of what drives me comes from knowing how quickly life changes. One minute you are rocking a baby to sleep, and before you know it, they are heading into middle school and asking for independence instead of cuddles. I think becoming a mother made me hyper aware of how fast time moves, and that changed the way I photograph people entirely. I do not just want to document what life looked like, I want people to remember what it felt like to live it.
Getting to this point was not always easy. There were seasons where I doubted myself constantly, seasons where I took on too much trying to prove something, and seasons where I was barely holding myself together behind the scenes while still showing up for everyone else. Building this career took a lot out of me at times, but I kept coming back to it because creating and storytelling have always felt like part of who I am.
Through all of it, my family has been the reason I kept going. They supported me during the late nights, the burnout, the uncertainty, and all the moments where I questioned whether I could really keep doing this long term.
When I look back now, I realize this journey was never just about photography. It was about learning who I was through every season of life, holding onto the people I love the most, and creating something meaningful out of all the chaos, beauty, grief, and growth along the way.
this is my love story
02.
I’d love to meet up for coffee or lunch! My treat <3
Yes… He’s picking his nose LOL
