Football season is in full swing here in Michigan right down to the high school level and it seems as though everyone is putting on a jersey to support their home or college team on Friday and Saturday nights. Back in the day, I stood along the sidelines in the 7th and 8th grade and stomped my feet and waved my pom poms for the Deckerville Eagles. As time went on, my interests changed and watching sports was never really my thing - but people watching always was. Today as a photographer I find it so much fun to attend live events where there are lots of people and activities going on so I've found myself returning to the turf under the Friday night lights with camera and long lenses in tow to capture the emotions and high energy of all participating. I find that these live events, like football games, allows me to exercise my creative muscles and to step into other realms of photography. This photojournalism approach, although different from my wedding and portrait photography, does still contain underlying themes of my style of documenting real life moments and we all know that high school gets pretty real.

I want to give a shout out to the junior varsity football and cheerleading teams at Airport High School in Carleton, MI ** GO JETS **!! This high school is special to me not only because I had the opportunity to work as a substitute teacher at this school for a few months upon graduating college, but also I have a really good friend who is the cheerleading coach, Emily (who I also did an adorable lifestyle session with - read about that here!), and my beau, Scott, is also the JV Defensive Coordinator. So along with photographing these wonderful students and athletes I get to cheer on Em and Scott as they pursue their own dreams.

Love Always,

Courtney Carolyn

p.s. I want to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who supports my goals and who are my personal cheerleaders for all that I do!