Hello and welcome!  I am Erica, the photographer and owner of Puddles & Pearls Photography! I included a little bit about myself and my photography journey in my  "meet the photographer" page here,  but if you'd like to know more about my personal journey, keep reading!  As you can see in the cute photo above, I am a wife and mother of 3 adorable littles! They are my biggest supporters and cheerleaders, and they most definitely keep me busy!  We also have a yellow lab named Hendrix and a few chickens! I married the love of my life, Travis, on a beautiful secluded Maui beach in 2011.  We had our first baby, a handsome little boy named Silas Philip in April of 2014.  Our gorgeous little girl Acacia Grace, was born in December of 2015, and our third and final, sweet baby girl, Hazel June was born in January of 2018.  My husband and I both grew up in the small town of Canon City, just south of Colorado Springs.  We went to the same high school, but didn't know each other until a few years later.  Travis joined the army at 18 and I started my art education degree at CSU-Pueblo.  Travis and I met my senior year in college, while I was student teaching.  After spending a few years stationed in Hawaii, he jumped at the first opportunity for Fort Carson to be close to home.  We actually got married in the middle of a year long Afghanistan deployment! We flew out to Hawaii during his 2 week mid-tour break! 

Photography was never really part of my life plan.  I loved taking photographs as a hobby but oil painting was my art of choice.  My plan was always to study painting in Italy, travel the world and only teach art until I could establish myself as a working artist!  In high school and college I don't think I owned a single piece of clothing that didn't have at least one paint stain on it. I specifically loved to paint portraits and would spend weeks or even months working on one painting to make sure all of the details were as realistic and accurate as possible.  Travis is also quite the artist himself, and prior to having kids, we loved to draw together and visit art galleries or just roam around in all the cute little artsy mountain towns!  I didn't start dabbling in photography as an art form until my second year of teaching.  I taught a unit on the history of photography, taught my students how to build cameras out of oatmeal boxes and took a trip to the fine art center's darkroom to develop our oatmeal box photos.  I knew nothing about photography prior so I had to do a lot of research and took a few darkroom classes and by the time we finished the unit I had a new hobby!  After having my son, I realized pretty quickly that painting was much harder and messier with a crawling, curious baby ha!  So I learned how to create digital paintings in Photoshop; which turns out is much faster, less messy, and can be done with a baby in your lap! Who knew?!?!  I started specializing in newborn photography when I decided to quit teaching to stay home after my daughter Acacia was born and haven't looked back!  I can't imagine finding another career that I'd love more than photographing newborn babies and capturing all the priceless memories of their first years of life!