The Night I Learned to Eat a Lobster (and What It Taught Me About Working With Brands)

I may live in Montana, but this was my first rodeo with a full crustacean. After a pivot in plans, I spent a beautiful week just south of Plymouth, Massachusetts with my boyfriend and his family. We were a short walk from the beach, staying at a property overlooking Ellisville Harbor State Park, watching osprey, terns, and plovers raise their families along the water. The biggest fish we caught all week came from the fish market, with one exception: a genuinely successful afternoon of clamming.

We watched the tides swell and retreat every day, and ate well, really well, closing with a salad and a bottle of wine. Before you glaze over at "homemade meals," I should clarify: my boyfriend's parents are professional chefs and bakers. None of this was normal for me. For Sarah and Ben, it's just daily life, sharing meals crafted with the kind of care that only comes from doing it for decades.

I won't do their history justice from memory, but a few details are worth sharing. They started their careers staffing a French restaurant during summers on Nantucket, spent off seasons working kitchens around the country, and eventually opened their own restaurant, then a bakery, in Vermont.

I'll let the photos do most of the talking from that evening. What these photos do show is real moments in between getting our hands dirty and the details that made the evening special. What they won't show is the small laceration I earned on my hand, somewhere between the demo and the next round of photos.

The Things That Were Already There

While I was shooting, I kept noticing the small things sitting in the background of an otherwise ordinary evening. Two bottles of wine on the table, clean labels, simple color, condensation already rolling down the glass in the thick ocean air. The white wine inside was exactly as crisp as the bottle promised, nothing I'd arranged, just what happened to be open that night.

I'd brought everyone bracelets as a small thank you for the trip, and his dad's, worn without a second thought, ended up sitting perfectly against the same nautical backdrop we'd been living in all week. I wasn't shooting it as a feature, I just couldn't help noticing it.

This Is the Difference Between Staged and True

None of this was staged. Lemon & Line and Field Recordings weren't placed in these photos, they were already there, worn and poured as intended. I do build a shot list before any shoot, that's how nothing important gets missed. But the frame that ends up mattering most is rarely the one I planned for. It's whatever's actually unfolding once I'm there, and catching that takes someone who can hold a plan loosely enough to still notice what the moment is doing on its own.

What This Means If You’re a Brand Considering Working With Me

I work with a small number of brands, lodges, and tourism boards each year as a Montana-based brand content photographer, building content the same way this was, real, a little unplanned, captured inside a moment instead of staged to manufacture one. A lot of brands spend real money trying to recreate a scene like this one. I'm just already living in it.