If you are ready to be seen as you are, I would be honoured to create something meaningful with you.

About Janice

Portraits created through connection

When I meet someone for the first time, it is rarely about what I see. It is about what I feel.

Energy comes first for me. A presence. A quiet confidence, a story waiting just beneath the surface. I have stopped people on the street or at trade shows simply to say, “I don’t know why, but I needed to talk to you. Your energy drew me in.” Sometimes it is their tattoos. Sometimes it is a smile. Always it is something real.

Over time, I have noticed how many people, especially women, have stopped believing they are perfect exactly as they are. We become distracted by numbers, by age, by imagined flaws that no one who loves us truly sees. Losing ten pounds does not change the way your family looks at you. Your presence does. Your laugh does. The way you show up in the world does.

Great photography does not happen because of lighting alone, or posing, or technical skill. Those things matter, and I bring them with intention. But the image comes alive because of the person in front of my camera. Because of the connection we build. Because you allow yourself to be seen.

For almost twenty five years, I did not allow that for myself.

Aside from the occasional snapshot, I avoided being photographed entirely. I was critical of my body, aware of my aging, and quietly unsure of myself. In many ways, I did not exist in pictures. I remember realizing that if something had happened to me during those years, there would have been almost nothing to show at my funeral. That truth stayed with me. It was not about vanity. It was about absence. I had not shown up. I had not allowed myself to be seen.

Everything shifted about three years ago at a photography conference. A photographer I had just met asked if she could take some images of me while practicing a new technique we had both learned. I said yes quickly, before I could overthink it. What she gave me in return were some of the most meaningful photographs I own. Not posed perfection, but me. My laugh. My smile. My hand gestures. The small, familiar expressions my family and close friends recognize instantly.

I was at one of my heaviest then. And for the first time, I understood that I was already enough.

Those portraits are framed in my studio in a large print, not as decoration, but as a reminder. Of what it feels like to be witnessed well. Of what becomes possible when we stop hiding. I see the same shift happen with my clients. The moment shoulders drop. Breath softens. Body language becomes effortless. The session begins to flow, often within the first fifteen minutes. That is the moment I am always waiting for.

I am intuitive by nature. I feel people before I analyze them. It is why I am drawn to intimate conversations rather than large crowds, to quiet observation over constant noise. I love music, especially the playlists my daughter creates every couple of months. I love sitting on a bench and watching the world move past. These moments of noticing inform everything I do.

It is also why projects like Inkcandescent are chosen with care. I do not invite every tattooed person I meet. I listen first. I wait. I let the story reveal itself before I ever lift a camera.

Motherhood has shaped my understanding of legacy more than anything else. Our home has always been filled with photographs. Not one or two, but walls of them. Printed, matted, framed. I wanted my daughter to see herself reflected back at her. To know she mattered enough to live on the walls of our home. When we moved recently and had to take those images down, the house felt empty. Not staged, but hollow. We were no longer there.

Photographs hold time in a way nothing else can. When I look through albums from our travels, moments return fully. I am there again. I can hold those memories in my hands.

That is what I want for my clients.

I want you to feel beautiful when you see your portraits. I want this experience to give you permission to be yourself, without apology or performance. And if you walk away with one thing, I want it to be this. You are unique. You deserve to be seen. I see you. And I love what I see.