She's Here! The Luvly Little Print Shop is Live

Hello from the sky! I am on my way back to Italy for three weeks to work, to play, and to see what life has in store for me next :) I had a hard time leaving for this trip. While I love my little Italian adventures it can be hard to have your heart in two places. I am going on two years now of flying back and forth every little while. Everyone asks how I endure this flight over and over but I absolutely love flying. Put me in any seat and I am happy up here. I should probably be trying to sleep so that I can be on Italy time when I arrive but I’m too excited to tell you that the print shop that I’ve been saying “will be done soon” is ready! Yaaaay!!! 

Paris is the first city we worked on getting ready to help us come up with how the shop will work (by “we” I mean sweet Amelia who figured out how to do it @ameliorateandcreate). My plan was to start with Paris and release a new city or gallery week by week until they’re all posted. In my mind, Paris HAD to be first. 

Whenever I go to a new city with my camera, I don’t stop moving. I wander, I get lost, and I just photograph It as I go. I don’t look for the touristy things that everyone else has photographed before, and I don’t spend a lot of time getting the “perfect” shot. I just live life and stop for a shot if the moment presents itself. While I am famously an overthinker, photography isn’t something I overthink. It’s one of the few things I can confidently do, and I do it my way. But when I got back from Paris I learned something about myself and my relationship with my camera.

I never look at the photos when I go to a new place until I am back home. I then put them into my computer to cull and process as I do all my sessions. I loaded my photos from Paris upon returning home expecting to see these light and airy, chipper, very “Erika” photos and I noticed that they were beautiful but they were a bit moody, somewhat dreary with hints of hope kind of sprinkled within them. They were how I was feeling that whole trip. It was at that point that it hit me that my camera was this tool to show more than just what I was seeing but how I was feeling; if I were to stop and overthink the shot….It would be more performative. Sure, I was in Paris in January on dreary days, but there are ways to make it look otherwise - I do it all the time in portrait sessions. I started to look back on all of my travel photos and it hit me how much storytelling was woven within them. I have always been a journal-er but I unknowingly had visuals to accompany all my entries. 

If you attended my gallery show in June of 2023 - you got a first hand look at how the print shop will work. While every print is named and tells a bit of what the photo is about, once you purchase, the printed photo will arrive with a print out of the story, my story of life at that moment. Most are short little snippets, but meaningful to me. Here is an example of one…

Every print has a story. They aren’t just pretty things I saw, they’re moments I felt, and I’m hoping that you too can feel something in them. Whether it’s a place you’ve always dreamt of going and it can hang as a reminder to keep dreaming, or it’s a place you have been where you left a piece of your heart. Or maybe it’s home. I hope that sharing these can help fill homes, offices, bedrooms and wall space with meaning and moments that share pieces of a larger story.  

I went back to Paris a couple years ago, and I chose not to photograph the actual city again, I rarely do. Instead I wandered with someone special, photographed her twirling in lovely dresses in gorgeous places and those photos WERE the Paris photos you would expect from me. Light, airy, floral, pretty. And by no means are my original images ugly in my opinion, I actually think the dreariness gives them a unique beauty. I am always so taken back when I look through them. It’s like I can feel what I was feeling then. I am so grateful for those moments that led me to this moment...sitting on a plane over the ocean, turning down the microwaved bbque chicken :) 

So.. Paris is ready and actually…. so is every other gallery!  I couldn’t only release one after MONTHS of saying it’s almost ready, and so many of you have been so excited. 

So.... Welcome to the LUVly Little Print Shop. My little passion project. The link is below :) 


http://www.luvedphotography.com/print-shop.html

The first few weeks will be a test run for how the site is working. I will be watching over it and tweaking it while eating too much pasta. After that the work will begin to start finding different fairs to sell at, shops to display at and we will go from there. I hope to continue having a love for wandering new places to keep it fresh, and I don’t know… maybe another gallery show? Or better yet - a Pop Up?! I’ll keep ya posted ;)