“All I ask is that you trust me.”

Sounds simple enough at face value, I suppose. 

But when you consider the fact that I am a complete stranger who you’re inviting into your home to sit cross-legged on your floor to play with your kids, or into your bridal suite to bustle your dress because your mom forgot her readers, or into your relationship to learn the ins and outs of what makes your love steadfast and complicated and wonderful all at the same time… 

…it turns out it’s a pretty monumental ask. 

When it came time to do new branding photos, I very well could have given you a totally false advertisement of me by posing in front of a white brick wall wearing business casual and holding up my camera for the whole world to see—as if you needed photographic evidence that I do, in fact, own one.

Excluding the fact that I haven’t worn business casual since further back in my memory than I can reasonably retrieve, you deserve better than that.

If I’m asking you to let me into your life—to photograph the version of you your favorite people know by heart—the least I can do is show you mine first.

Scans Developed at Boutique Film Lab in Nashville, Tennessee

You deserve the same ask of me that I ask of you: to trust you to accept me as I am, in my natural habitat in my bungalow in Nashville, doing my New York Times crossword puzzle while I eat my hyperfixation breakfast in my robe.

Instead of doing what I always do and overthinking the idea into stasis, I made a weekend of documenting the life I really live and the me I really am—the same version you’ll experience when we work together.

So, here it is: evidence of my existence before I ask for access to yours. 

Hi, I’m Ali Miller. I’m a photographer in Nashville (who also makes my way to Minnesota and New York and Europe every now and again).

I trust you. All I ask is that you trust me, too.

I specialize in true candid photography.

I’ve always hoped I do candid photography good and right. And to a degree, I’ve known that I do. But hearing it reflected back at me by one of my brides hit differently.

My bucket list Montana bride, Wendy, recently told me that you’d think my clients were meant to be on camera for how natural and comfortable they look, all because of how simultaneously present and invisible I manage to be. (It’s almost like it’s on purpose.)

Not only did hearing that make me sob a little bit, but it made me consider how challenging it is to capture photos that are really, truly candid—not to be confused for buzzword “candid.”

Consider it this way:

Taking photos of flowers is easy. Showing how those flowers smelled like the bride’s childhood living room? That’s hard, but that’s what I love to do.

Capturing your private first dance is a walk in the park. Shape-shifting into the closest thing to wallpaper so that moment makes you feel like nobody else has ever existed? That’s something akin to magic… but you can bet I’ll try.

Asking you to laugh and smile at your shoes takes no effort at all (and I would never). Catching the different degrees of laughter that you have in your catalog of laughs because you forgot my lens was trained on you in the first place? Mind-bending work, I tell you what.

They say what you see is what you get. When you work with me, who you are—with all your quirks, insecurities, rituals, and gloriously human traits—is exactly who you’ll find in your documentary-style photographs.

As a Nashville photographer, I capture evidence of people living a life. I figured you might like some evidence of mine.

I think the most epic photos are the ones you wouldn’t think to describe that way.

Not to challenge everything you’ve known to be true, but the most epic things about you won’t be found in a dramatic dip kiss at the end of the aisle or a first look that was set up so formulaically, the magic was stripped right out of it.

The epic stuff is in the small moments and even smaller gestures.

In the way your hand instinctively wanders to the same place on your partner’s waist anytime you have a minute to yourselves. In the go because your partner brings out the weird (read: the best) in you. In how you’d think gravity itself was gluing your youngest kid to your right leg during your in-home photography session. Or how you’d never have guessed your brother was proud of you until you saw the photo of the look on his face when you walked down the aisle.

We’ve collectively gotten a little too good at assigning the word epic to the biggest, loudest, most grandiose moments. But the candid, documentary-style photographs that stop me in my tracks—the ones I stare at for far too long when they’re pulled up on my editing screen—are almost always the ones most people would’ve thought insignificant.

Like the overhead shot of my coffee table. Most people would see a cluttered surface. I see a self-portrait.

Ordinary has a funny way of becoming extraordinary as soon as you realize it won’t happen the exact same way with the exact same humans ever again. 

I’ve dedicated my entire existence to celebrating humanity.

I think it’s pretty cool to be a human.

To laugh so hard you wheeze a little bit. To not realize you inherited your mom’s mannerisms until you’re standing side by side at your wedding reception. To make a habit of brushing your bangs as soon as they step out of the shower for fear they’ll be sticking up straight in the morning if you don’t.

We don’t necessarily do conventionally remarkable things every day. But when you think about the fact that no two people do ordinary in quite the same way, you start traipsing into mind-blowing territory. We all have our own lineup of quirks, our own nervous habits, our own ways of making damn sure someone knows we love them.

I get to spend my days noticing those things so they don’t get lost to the hands of time, before handing them back to people who didn’t realize they were worth remembering. 

I think that’s pretty remarkable, don’t you?

I think we could all stand to stop trying so hard to be something other than ourselves.

I can’t help but notice how often we convince ourselves our lives need to be something other than what they are in order to be worth documenting.

The counters should probably be cleaner. The laundry basket should probably be out of the frame. The toddler should probably stop insisting on wearing a tiara with their pajamas (I love her already). The dog hair should probably not be on the couch.

You should probably know what to do with your hands. You should probably laugh a little prettier, whatever that means. You should probably be… just a little bit less. (Please, no.)

But the moments most worth capturing never really cared much for should. 

The best moments have days-old coffee rings left on the nightstand. A crossword half-finished at the kitchen table. The same chipped mug you reach for every morning before your eyes have even opened all of the way left in the sink. The fleeting realization that you miss your grandma most anytime you’re measuring brown sugar.

None of it might feel especially beautiful at the time… until it does. Until years later, it makes you think, “God, I forgot we even did that. I forgot that was us, then.”

All we really need is permission to stop trying so hard to make our lives look meaningful and start noticing that they pretty much already are.

The One where the Nashville Photographer Learns A Little Something For Herself

As I’m writing this, I’m realizing I took these new documentary-style branding photos for myself just as much as I took them for you. Believing someone when they insist your everyday existence is enough isn’t as easy as us documentary photographers make it out to be. 

It’s vulnerable stuff, giving some stranger access to your wedding day, or your house, or your kids, or your relationship. 

But life has a not-that-funny, completely unfair way of turning into history while it’s still happening. And the only way to preserve that is to let someone stand close enough to see it while it’s still here.

That takes trust.

Proximity to your life is a privilege. Thank you for trusting me. I promise to use it well. 

To notice his hand walking its way down your spine as a reminder he’s not going anywhere. To consider the way your nose scrunches up—but only when you’re laughing with her—to be art itself. To hand some of your mundane, ordinary life back to you before it goes down in history as one of the most epic things this world has ever seen.