where it all began..

From a young age, I have always been a very sentimental person.

One of my favourite things to do growing up was to pull out our family photo albums and look at the photos of myself growing up. To see the story that was my childhood and my existence.

As a teenager I always had a digital camera to take pictures of my friends and family as I wanted to remember the story.

Creating photo collages, scrap books and even photo video montages.

I even had a wall full of photos, blue tacked to the wall.

Photos kept my memories alive.

When I became a mother, I became fixated on capturing my babies and never getting in the frame. The images were pixelated and blurry but I still had the memories.

Then in May 2020, my dad died suddenly, unexpectedly and everything changed.

I was devastated and heartbroken.

When I went back to look for the memories there weren’t many, which only added to my grief.

In the midst of my grief, I vowed to myself to capture everything, my children, their childhood, the small and big moments that make up our story.

So I got my first camera and took photos of Alice & Lana all the time, I practised on repeat and did many online courses to understand my camera, then I practiced on my friends and their families.

Until 2022 when I decided to take a leap of faith and turn my love for photography into a side hustle of capturing other people’s stories.

That is when Jess Verhey Photography was born.

Over the past almost 4 years I have seen incredible growth. With so many clients trusting me with their most valuable possessions their memories.

When we realise that some of our most treasured memories only still exist because of photos we can really appreciate just how truly invaluable they. One day these memories will be all we have left of someone we love or all that our children have of us.

Nothing in life can stop time, but photographs can help us to hold the moment and pause time. Photographs give us the only thing we can’t get back in life and that is time.