THERE’S REASON I CARE SO MUCH ABOUT LOVE, LIGHT, PEOPLE + MOMENTS. IT JUST MIGHT NOT WHAT YOU EXPECT.
 
HEAR ME OUT.  

I never really fit in. And 22-year old me is okay with that.
Growing up with some serious bullying, abuse, toxic friendships and other shitty experiences turned me into someone who always builds people up and makes those around me feel happy, loved, and worthy. I care a lot about putting good into the world because I know exactly how much unkindness there can be, and I try to put a smile on the face of everyone I meet. Who couldn’t use just a little more kindness or love in their day?
 
Just a girl & her motorcycle.
On a motorcycle, you’re never supposed to look down at your hands or at the dashboard; you're only supposed to look at where you want to go. Learning to ride with my dad when I was eight, having a painful accident at nineteen, and getting right back on at twenty-one (trembling hands + big fat nervous tears + all) taught me the power of awareness and presence in everything I do. Basically, you have to trust your own instincts + body + the motorcycle in order to get to where you want to go, and that is the most crucial lesson I could have ever learned about life, too. 
 
The one where everything burned.
It’s a pretty indescribable feeling to wake up one day and realize the only thing you own is the clothes on your back and the contents of your tiny purse. Not even a hairbrush to fix your madly unacceptable bedhead. All jokes aside, my family and I lost our home to a total-loss fire while I was in high school. It wasn’t easy, but it taught me the difference between prioritizing stuff vs. memories, feelings and people. Making every moment count and surrounding myself with people who truly love and support me is so much more crucial than anything I could ever buy. 

Books on books on books. 
I’m a book nerd. I was 100% that kid sneaking a flashlight under the covers to finish the chapter past my bedtime, & it made me into the big, dorky-level romantic I am today. The epic, star-crossed, all-encompassing love stories I read about grew new universes in my heart and my mind that my bullies couldn’t touch if they tried. Once I looked up, though, I found that real life love stories are sometimes even better than the ones in books.
 
The magic of the Arizona desert.
I grew up in a city so so vibrantly full of color and open fields and cacti and wildlife, and I have so much respect for the insane magic of mother nature. Getting lost in the way light and shadow and color and movement come together to create things that our eyes just can’t look away from has always inspired me, but learning to actually capture these things with a camera was the ultimate game changer. Cameras make art tangible. Add in a super in love couple, and there’s nothing quite like it ;)
 
Finally figuring it out. 
Capturing my first wedding brought all of these things together at once. Hello, “Maia’s DUH Moment.” Suddenly, I found a way to not only witness the crazy amazing epic love stories I’d always read about in books, but I also found myself becoming the storyteller who got to capture and share them. And I don’t take that responsibility lightly. I want every photo of your wedding day to make you feel the way you felt in the moment, every time you look at it, the same way that one moment in a book or a movie makes you cry every time (don’t deny it). I want to capture your forever love, exactly the way you dreamed it would be. I want to be the best damn wedding storyteller I can be.