We’ve Been in France For the Past Two Weeks; It Was An Unplugged Dream

I’ll never forget the moment I walked into Saint Chapelle.

I had never experienced breathlessness from beauty before and it’s rare that I find myself speechless for over a minute but that is where I found myself moments after cresting the stairs to this beautiful, light-leaking-through-glass-filled room. My father and I were both brought to tears and Sam and my mom were both also struck by the beauty of this 14th century treasure. It was incredible. It will forever exist as a core memory of my life and I’m so thankful for that small, yet monumental moment in time. I’ll never forget meandering the room with the three of them, trying to decode the beauty of the images portrayed in the glass windows, and trying also to capture the perfect picture which actually didn’t turn out so bad!

What I’m sure I will forget in time – but maybe not, considering I’m immortalizing it on the world wide web right now – is the man who was standing just outside the doors of the chapel. He was hunched over, yelling into his phone about meetings, emails and who knows what other work garbage he seemed not to be able to step away from in that moment of his life. His family sat a few feet away from him, looking as if they’d rather be anywhere else than this place that I thought was one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.

I’m not judging this person.

Actually, yes I was. But I must admit that while I lived in NYC and felt immense pressure to always be on, that I was this person… Makes me sick to think about that, and I’ve promised myself that was a state of mind of the past for me.

During Covid, Sam and I found that we throughly enjoyed spending a lot of our time together and, to be completely honest, it was a major reason why we started this business. We thought that going back to office jobs apart from one another would have been such a change from the life we had started to build together. We had been long-distance before the pandemic for about nine months and during lockdown we found ourselves inseparable and loving our new lives. We both were taking time away from our previous jobs and thought, why not try to figure out how to work with one another so that we can continue to spend this awesome, quality time together.

While I love shooting and working with Sam every day, it’s not exactly the quality time we were both seeking as we embarked on our business journey. The quality time we wanted to enjoy more of were moments like the one we experienced in Saint Chapelle - moments away from our desk. Days that we could take off because we had spent the last 30 days working non-stop. It’s moments like this that I’ve discovered have been the most rewarding in starting our own business. While the ups from a great project, glowing feedback, and fun shoots are tremendous they pale in comparison to the time we’ve been able to take to explore the world with one another and our loved ones - moments like this trip to France. And I’m not afraid to say that.

As a videographer, it's easy to feel like you always need to be creating, documenting, and working, even when you're supposed to be taking time off.

There's a sort of unspoken expectation that, no matter where you are, you should be capturing the world through your camera. But to further solidify my point above, I didn’t let myself think about work once on this trip. I don’t think any of the four of us ever brought up one single thing about work once we took off the runway in Boston.

I suppose my point in writing this blog is to tell my very active and avid readers (Hey Mom and Dad!) that I’ve made it a priority in my life to step away from work when I’ve decided that I not only deserve it, but should allow myself a break. It’s been one of the best aspects of running my own business; the freedom to step away. Sam and I had the best trip ever with my family in France and we’ll cherish the moments we shared forever. Thankfully not one single one of those moments involved an email, voicemail or anxiety about what was waiting for us at our desks.

What I was able to throughly enjoy while we were abroad was taking time to document the trip through photos. And while this might seem work related, I promise that it wasn’t. We are videographers, not photographers after all, and these photos are so special to us now!

Enjoy!