There's a moment I've noticed in almost every session I shoot. Right after the first few frames, something shifts. People stop posing and start being themselves.
I think about why that happens. Part of it is just getting comfortable with any photographer. But part of it, I believe, is something else. When a client sees someone who looks
like them, who moves through the world the way they do, something relaxes that no amount of "okay, now act natural" can fix.
I started Mykel Studios because I kept seeing the same gap. Families in Snohomish County, Seattle, the whole South Sound, were celebrating weddings, birthdays, milestones, real, beautiful, significant moments and the images coming back didn't quite look like them. Not bad photos. Just photos that felt like they were made for someone else.
That's the thing about photography that people don't always say out loud. The photographer's eye shapes everything. What gets framed. What gets kept. What the light falls on. A photographer who has been to a Nigerian wedding reception, who knows what the reveal moment means, who understands why the fabrics and the colors matter that photographer is going to make different choices than one who hasn't.
I'm not here to be the only option. I'm here to be an option that didn't exist before for a lot of families in this area. And every time someone sees their photos and says "that's exactly us" and that's why I do this.