Mandy Hough
(Noun)\Man-dē ‘Həf\
Definition: Photographer, mother of the world’s cutest baby boy and arts and crafts enthusiast from Seattle who drinks too much coffee and laughs at her own jokes.

My love affair with art and all things creative began long before I picked up my first DSLR. My mother still has the detailed mermaid crayon drawings complete with carefully sketched eyelashes & bracelets I created before I was three. Anything I have ever owned has had an added personal touch. I’ve sanded and repainted 90% of my furniture, my wall art is mostly all my own creation. I can’t bear a room unpainted & a good amount of my clothes have been altered by me in some way. Aesthetics are important to me. Finding something extraordinary in what seems to be ordinary gets me ‘six year old in a puppy store’ giddy. Estate Sale-ing for potential furniture- revamp projects make me pee a little. Trips to Michael’s just to walk through the isles staring at stamps & Martha Stewart glitter? Sign me up! Paper Mache? I’m down. I’m crafty like ice is cold, get it?
In 2009, my husband bought me a nikon. He was in Afghanistan that year on a marine corps deployment and was probably trying to compensate for his absence by gifting me with over the top stuff. When I opened the package it was a lot like when Harry Potter entered Olivander’s wand shop & gave the phoenix feather wand a swish. The clouds parted & the choir sang the first time I auto focused a snapshot of my naked newborn nephew. The two of us were made for eachother. From that moment on I was a woman obsessed. I began begging my friends to let me “play photographer”. All day every day I could only think of my next  photo session concepts and when I wasn’t forcing my friends to be my photography lab rats, I was reading my camera manual, photo blogs & books by the pros & fine tuning my skills. At first I was not that good, not going to lie, but I loved it! And when you fully immerse yourself in something, there’s no way you can suck at it forever. So here I am.
I’ve dabbled in professional photography here and there, but it was not until now that I’v decided to really narrow it down to what I really love to focus on and dive into my business. Before now I was a photographer of everything. Babies, couples, portraits, seniors, families, you name it. I like photographing everything but what really got me excited were the couples! I love love. I married my highschool sweetheart and soulmate. I feel like I’m living in a world full of jaded cinics and love-bashers. That’s why photographing lovebirds brings me such joy. I want to prove to those scrooges that it really does exist! I also feel like I have a connection with couples. I know what they are feeling and I want to capture it for them. The thought of my photos being the ones the someday show to their grandbabies makes my heart sing. Love. I dig it.

Here’s my most recent day after wedding session. Shooting these two was such a delight. It was so easy to capture what was happening for them so naturally. They were lost in their own little world & they seemed to forget that I was clickin’ away in the background.