About Me

Hi!

If you didn’t know this already, my name is Erika! I’ve loved photography for years, getting my first “starter” camera when I was a sophomore in high school! I started off on a small Olympus mirrorless camera with interchangeable lenses, and I thought I was ready to be the best photographer around. My weekends and summers became filled with convincing my friends to come to some new location with me and letting me take photos of them for no reason - I absolutely loved it!

I worked on the yearbook for two years in high school, which just made me love photography even more. I became obsessed with capturing every moment - I wanted to make sure we all remembered everything! I still love to look back at my junior and senior yearbooks and point out all the photos I took in them. It might seem small, but I was so, so proud of that work!

I graduated high school and then went to Western Illinois University, where I majored in Journalism and minored in Creative Writing and Political Science (as you can tell, my interests are extremely varied). I also began working for the newspaper at WIU, called The Western Courier. I had so many amazing experiences being a news editor and eventually editor-in-chief for the newspaper, including covering the 2016 presidential election! If you’re interested in knowing a little bit more about this time in my life, you can check out this site here.

After graduation, I took a job with the same yearbook company that published my yearbooks in high school! This meant I got to travel all over the place and teach high school kids the joys of copywriting and photojournalism. One of my favorite topics to teach on was photojournalism and ethics in editing!

After a couple of years, I got engaged to my wonderful fiance and decided to move back to central Illinois so we could start our lives surrounded by our friends and families. I took a job I absolutely adore working in marketing, and now I get to work more with my photography again as well! I’m so excited to see what this next chapter of my life holds, and I’m so excited to be pursuing one of my favorite hobbies.

Send me an email or a message on Facebook or Instagram - let’s chat through any ideas you have for a photoshoot! :)