Born in the Mountains, Drawn to Music & Magic

I think the mountains taught me how to see.

I was born and raised in Appalachia, in a place where the mountains seem to hold every story that has ever been told. Where fog settles into the valleys in the morning, old roads disappear around bends, wildflowers grow wherever they please, and the light has a way of turning ordinary places into something sacred.

This part of the world is in me.

It is in the way I notice the sun spilling through the trees.
The way I am drawn to old houses, worn wood, fields at dusk, river water, vintage photographs, and places that feel like they have secrets.

It is probably one of the reasons I became a photographer.

I have always been fascinated by the things that disappear.

A laugh that lasts only a second.

The way someone looks at the person they love when no one else is watching.

Wind catching a veil.

Bare feet in the grass.

A father trying not to cry before walking his daughter down the aisle.

A grandmother’s hands.

The last light of summer.

Photography gives me a way to hold onto those things.

But if the mountains taught me how to see, music taught me how to feel.

Music has always been another language for me.

There are songs that can take me back to an exact moment in my life faster than any photograph ever could. A guitar riff can make me feel seventeen again. An old record can turn a quiet room into another decade. One lyric can crack open a memory I thought I had forgotten.

Maybe that is why music and photography have always felt connected to me.

They both preserve something invisible.

A feeling.

A memory.

A version of ourselves that existed for only a moment.

I love rock and roll. I love the imperfections in it. The grit. The emotion. The sound of fingers sliding across guitar strings and voices that aren’t perfectly polished.

I love music that feels lived in. And I want my photographs to feel the same way.

Not stiff. Not overly perfect. Alive.

I want movement. Wind. Laughter. Messy hair. Bare feet. Leather jackets over wedding dresses. Champagne sprayed into the night. Couples running through fields. Flash photography after dark. Quiet moments tucked between loud ones.

I want photographs that feel like your favorite song.

The kind you haven’t heard in years, but somehow still know every word to.

And then there is the magic.

I have always believed there is more magic in ordinary life than we realize.

Not the kind you find in fairy tales.

The kind that actually exists.

Fog floating over an Appalachian mountain.

Fireflies in July.

Two people finding each other in a world this enormous.

Someone laughing so hard they forget a camera is pointed at them.

A bride standing under the moon after everyone has gone inside.

A dog resting its head in someone’s lap.

A field glowing gold for five minutes before the sun disappears.

Those moments are magic to me.

They are fleeting, imperfect, and impossible to recreate exactly the same way twice.

That is what I am always looking for when I photograph someone.

Not perfection.

Magic.

Maybe that is what “Ethereal Meets Rock n’ Roll” has always meant to me.

It is softness and grit living in the same place.

Romance without losing the wildness.

Beauty without making everything perfect.

A little darkness.

A little light.

Vintage records and wildflowers.

Leather jackets and lace.

Mountain roads and midnight songs.

Fairy tales with dirty boots.

That contradiction feels like Appalachia to me, too.

This place is beautiful, but it is not delicate.

These mountains have survived storms, floods, fires, loss, and generations of people building lives between them.

There is strength here.

There are stories here.

And no matter how far I travel, there is something about coming back into these mountains that feels like returning to a part of myself.

I photograph weddings and elopements across Virginia, Tennessee, the Appalachian Mountains and far beyond them, but I will always carry this place with me.

The mountains taught me to notice the light.

Music taught me to feel the moment.

And photography gave me a way to keep a little piece of the magic.

That is what I want to create for the people who step in front of my camera.

Not simply photographs of what your life looked like.

Photographs that remind you what it felt like.

Something a little wild.

Something a little nostalgic.

Something that feels like music.

Something that feels like magic.

Something that feels like you.

would love to meet you,

Emily Lauren Photography
Ethereal Meets Rock n’ Roll.