My name is Shana, pronounced Shauna or Shawna but spelled Shana. I got my name from the Chinese character “Shan” which means a big Douglas fir tree. Despite having a name with such strong roots, I moved many times at the start of my life living a year in Canada, in Wisconsin, and finally settling in New Jersey. I grew up in central Jersey where all my peers were competitive in the science technology field. However I took several courses in creative writing, both in grade school and in other states for talented youth programs during the summer. I was always electing art courses in school, and am a hobbyist in sketching, watercoloring, and even Chinese art painting or “guo hua” as an elective course in weekend Chinese schools. My parents saw that I enjoyed art and invigorated my creative writing and artistic talents through a series of classes in my youth but cautioned me against taking a career in the arts, guiding me to more practical routes. Thus, I attended pharmacy school and after graduating with my PharmD, pursued a hospital residency in NYC where I met my husband Alan on Coffee Meets Bagel. We found out we were both romantics and dreamers at heart but always like Icarus tied down to earth in our more practical day to day practice of finishing our professional training. My husband bonded in our love of food and travel. We are both huge foodies and enjoy discovering new paths, parks, trails, and places to study to quench our gustatory and travel lust sense of wonder. When we were in our dating phase, Alan introduced me to photography and while I enjoyed taking pictures during high school and pharmacy school for the yearbook, I knew very little about aperture and ISO and all of the technical terms. Alan explained to me how he created photos and videos during med school and I was really inspired because around this time I was also starting my own blog on Tumblr. Alan went to medical school and residency as I was training and just started my first few years as newly minted clinical/hospital pharmacist. In my career as a pharmacist, I touched the lives of patients on a broad spectrum of diverse socioeconomic statuses. I worked in both a nationally recognized academic center in the heart of NYC and a community hospital in the Bronx both serving as a pediatric pharmacist and a research pharmacist, dispensing investigational medications to prevent HIV transmission in high risk populations and between mother and child. I always believed a life is worthwhile if you lived it to help others. As healthcare providers, this is our mission. Training and working in NYC, the scenery in the urban atmosphere is so romantic— the angular perspectives of the skyscrapers, the beautiful orchids and magnolias around Central park and Bow bridge enchanted us and we took photos of our family and friends initially as artistic candid portraits for their engagements and graduations. The more I did it, the more I got into it and felt absorbed in each photo session a piece of my humanity. I felt in every imagery and movement a representation of a chapter in someone’s life. There’s these phases and important moments we want to remember and recall. Looking back, I felt this enormous sense of honor, reward, and gratitude to have been a part of someone else’s day to help them capture these momentous occasions and candid memories they didn’t see while they were in it. I recently became a mom a few years ago and just this year welcomed our second child. Looking back on my first pregnancy and raising an infant through toddlerhood, it all seems like it happened too fast to me. I mean I print photos every 6 months but I can’t recall the connection of expression and thoughts I had while being in it. I can’t say it was a blur but definitely felt like a whirlwind. During my maternity leave, I made friends in our local community, resonated with aspects of parenthood, and “making it through each day”with our daily lives; yet we all had future plans that are our north stars. I learned that several families despite juggling parenthood and full time jobs have passions and turned their passions into businesses. As a mom and in the second phase of my career and now working in the medical content creation field, I saw the opportunity of entrepreneurship and know that we miss 100% of the chances we don’t take. None of our immediate family own businesses and as chronic employees working in the healthcare field, we wanted to build connections with parents in our community, either starting or in the midst of their quest of raising little people. It inspired me to dig deeper and organize events where people met people and slowly we weaved this web of community because the phrase “it takes a village to raise children” can never ring more true and authentic to our daily lives. We are parents. We are professionals. We are pursuing our passions with a big question mark over our heads of whether this venture will be successful or whether we are in over our heads. On a trip back from Monterey, I witnessed how short life can be— a truck collided with a blue sedan and all that’s left is a tangled metal and a flattened car with no roof. There was a white sheet draped over a human form and I just remembered not long ago it was the new year. This person was filled with new ambitions, goals, and plans for how they would spend this year and everything is suddenly gone. It left a heavy feeling of melancholy in my heart as we meandered through the mountain passes of the interstate. I was listening to a podcast of how to market our photography business and the most important lesson I learned is that as photographers, we need to build connections with you, our people in front of our lens. Life is fleeting and messy and we mess up so much as imperfect people but we don’t have too much time to wonder what if. I was always told I was a doer and sometimes even impulsive at times but I truly believe I need to dive in to the water to truly learn from my experiences. And so, I know there are a ton of other photographers you can hire in our area, some who have been doing it for years but if you support us, we are so humbled as we don’t come from a business background and this is the first business we’ve ever started. We are open to your feedback and we want you to know that our initial venture is going to be imperfect to say the least but we are passionate about it and created it to tell your journey. Our mission is to immortalize in detail the way we experience human connection— the loving glance, the subtle smirk, the half wink, and crinkled noses. We use light, natural settings, surroundings, and necessary props to formulate magic and bottle it up in a still timeless format that you can show to your children and grandchildren. Our style is to portray your family and individual experiences as authentically as we can because we believe in our mission of raw human connection to showcase it in a way that you and your family can be appreciated and understood.