Sham of the Perfect – Poulsbo Documentary Family Photograper

One of my goals for 2015 was to join some sort of collaborative project.  Well, I ended up going a step further and helped start one instead.  Along with Natasha and Lacey I helped create Sham of the Perfect; a collaborative project that celebrates documentary family photography.  Specifically, we wanted to create a space for photographers to share and be inspired by images that are gritty, raw, honest and not always technically picture perfect.  We wanted a place that embraced images with great moments albeit in less than great light and showcased images whose frames aren’t tidy and clean and without clutter.  What are one photographer’s “distractions” are another photographer’s context clues within a story.  And we love context.

Once we launched our project in January the response was more than what we could have anticipated.  We had clearly struck a nerve with lots of people and, in hindsight, creating this community is certainly one of the things I am most proud of doing during the course of 2015.

As a part of the project I submitted a documentary image of my own to be published each week, as well as a few additional images for monthly themed challenges.  Below are each of my submitted images from 2015.  It’s pretty awesome to see them all together in one place.

And I am so excited that we have decided to continue Sham of the Perfect through 2016, complete with a new website and new ways for our community to interact and showcase each other’s work.