I have a skincare regimen about eight bottles deep and it burns a $900 hole in my pocket every year. A small drop in the bucket compared to the $3.8 billion the entire US spent on anti-wrinkle creams last year. Why do I, like so many other women, spend so much money erasing wrinkles from my face and slowing the inevitable new ones from forming before I’m ready for them?

As we close out 2025 OUR 20TH YEAR IN BUSINESS, watch this special message from the owner.

Our friends at Cinema Femme asked me to share some of my old filmmaking stories for their magazine, and we ended up talking about an unexpected topic: the idea of following your dreams and passions as an unhealthy and possibly toxic idealization of selfhood.

This year is the 20th year for my small business and it’s got me thinking a lot about my grandfather and the businesses he ran. For years I thought I was a bit of a black sheep in the family for going out on my own as a gig worker then a small business owner instead of following the rules of a W-2. But it was my grandfather who brought entrepreneurship into the family.

I started Organic Headshots in the spring of 2005, exactly 20 years ago. Like most photo studios, it was just me that first year: one photographer, one camera, and one bucket of gumption to start my own business taking great photos of great people.

Now we’re one of the few photography studios in the country employing multiple full-time photographers.

The anniversary everyone is trying to avoid talking about right now is how we’re at the COVID-19 pandemic’s five year mark. When I’m asked how this time five years ago affected me and my business I think of two stories to tell.

Time for a humble brag: our studio is so rad, that we were given one of the most esteemed honors in the Chicago photography industry. We were chosen to take all of the photos for this year’s Crain’s Chicago Business 40 Under 40.

It’s National Infertility Awareness Week (April 21st-27th, 2024), which was created to not just bring awareness to how pervasive infertility is (since 1 in 8 couples has trouble conceiving, it’s a pretty safe bet you already know infertility is a thing), but to also reduce the stigma around talking about infertility.

I don’t remember where I heard it, but years ago I heard someone say that most people are more likely to return to a restaurant that messed up their order but apologized and made it right than a restaurant that got their order right the first time. Correcting a mistake is one of the purest ways to gain trust with someone: it says, “even when things go wrong I will work hard to make them right.”

Happy Women’s History Month! Your inbox is probably flooded with emails about inclusivity, pride, and solidarity (which is never a bad thing, right?). To spice up your reading, I wanted to share something a little different—a more personal story of what today means to me as a woman business owner.

As photographers, we understand that most people have a love/hate relationship with us. And we embrace that. We know that if we capture a good photo of you, you’ll love us.

Now and then we get asked why our studio is called “Organic Headshots,” because it’s kind of a strange name for a photo studio. So if you’ve ever wondered about it and were too shy to ask, here’s the story: in 2005 an actor friend of mine needed emergency headshots …