I’m Pen, the McKinley of McKinley-Rodgers, and I am lucky enough to work with the man I love making a living documenting one of the most special days in peoples lives and the days in between. I’ve always loved the magic a single photograph can capture and believe wholeheartedly in the art of memory keeping.

Yet for a long time I resisted capturing my personal stories, wondering if there was real purpose to it outside of fun creative expression; after all I don’t have children, so who am I recording it for? As a result I would often start a project only to find myself distracted by other things which I deemed more ‘important’ or worthy of my time.

Then my mother passed away on 29 November 2012, and for 3 days after I found myself looking through old photographs in remembrance and celebration of her. As I tried to piece together fragments of her life and my memories of her, through boxes of loose images and albums of miscellaneous events, I craved for chronology and written memories to reference and mark my current feelings against. I realised then that those times were lost forever and, although it won’t stop me collecting stories about her retrospectively, the experiences we shared and my feelings about them can now only be seen through shades of bittersweet hindsight. There is beauty in that, and I am looking forward to the journey, but it’s made me appreciate the true importance of memory keeping and the treasure it holds for our self.

I still have a future of memories to make, and ones which I don’t want to forget; as such, and in honour of my mother, this blog was born.

This is my home for memory keeping which celebrates life as we live it, capturing moments and reflections so they will always be readily available to cherish and remember.