Hi everyone--and welcome! to my blog, "the photokatie photojournal." I'm so happy to be able to share a little bit of my love for pictures with you on a regular basis, and to give you a little peek into my world. I hope you'll come back often to see favorite real-life portraits from my latest shoots and to hear about exciting new developments at Maya K. Photography!
I'd like to address what is possibly my most frequently asked question, "Why 'Maya K'?" Obviously my name is not Maya (though I confess I've been tempted, when I get tired of explaining, to let people think it is ;-), but for various reasons, I didn't want to just be "Katie Nees Photography." So I started to brainstorm, research, and discuss ideas with my "committee", and though I'm sure I couldn't entirely explain my train of thought if my life depended on it, I ended up reading about 'Maya,' a name I've always liked, which as it turns out is a Sanskrit word meaning "illusion." In their tradition, Maya is "the natural illusion that the self is separate from the universe" --the idea that there is a distinction between consciousness (our "selves") and the physical world (everything else).
Now, I'm certainly not an expert on Eastern philosophy, but I know that for me, photography is connection. I find it way, way too easy to feel like I'm all alone, and I know of no better way to bring people together than to capture trust, closeness, joy, innocence, and love in a way they can hold on to at times when they feel unloved or unlovable. So although it might seem like the camera just records what's in front of it, by making real-life portraits--capturing people being themselves, and showing them how beautiful that really is--I hope I can remind them that the illusion is just that, and really we're all in this together.
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