The White Family - Allen, Audra, Levi, Cheyenne, and in their hearts, Baby Zane
Christmas 2009
Audra graduated from Arizona State University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism with emphasis in Graphic Arts and Photography. With over 14 years of experience, Audra shoots a wide variety of subjects. She shoots events such as weddings, corporate parties, dance schools, karate studios, sports portraits, modeling portfolios, as well as family, Senior and children's portraits. Her commercial endeavors include architectural interior and exterior photography for architects, builders and realtors, motorcycle lifts, custom built waterfalls, swimming pools, bronze sculptured Western Art, and landscaping finish designs, just to name a few. Each project featured a variety of promotional materials, from brochures, website photography and showroom display to web shows and DVD slide shows.
Audra uses a Nikon digital camera, capturing the beauty of natural light. She offers location shooting of the subject's choice or she can offer good location suggestions. For larger projects, such as schools, a portable studio will be set up at your location. For outdoor shooting, typically the best time to shoot is during the "sweet light" hours, sunset or sunrise, but any time of day can produce beautiful images.
Audra has lived in Arizona most of her life, though she has also lived in Colorado, New Mexico, and California. Primarily, she photographs in Tucson and occasionally in the Phoenix area. She has 3 biological children, Zane, ascended to heaven at 3 months, Levi, age 9, and Cheyenne, age 6. She also has 3 step children, Joel, age 24, Jessy, age 21, and Brandon, age 20.
Last year, Audra decided to join Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep as an affiliated photographer. NILMDTS is a non-profit organization that recruits professional photographers to volunteer their time and services to go to local hospitals to photograph an infant who has died. The bereaved family receives, as a gift, the photos of their precious child that capture the fleeting moments that they get to share in this life with him or her. For more information on NILMDTS check out www.nowilaymedowntosleep.org.
Through meeting bereaved families, Audra also decided to start up a MISS Foundation in North Tucson. MISS stands for Mothers In Sympathy and Support. It is another non-profit organization that helps support bereaved families suffering through grief after the tragic loss of a child, of any age, from any cause. When Zane died 10 years ago, the MISS Foundation in Phoenix helped her through her toughest days. She wanted the families in Tucson to have a safe place to grieve, and talk about their beautiful child or children, just as she did. The MISS Foundation Tucson meets on the fourth Tuesday of every month at 7-9 pm at Faith Community Church at 2551 W. Orange Grove, in the west building just inside the west entrance. For mor information on the MISS Foundation check out www.missfoundation.org.
Audra remembers when she first started attending MISS meetings after the tragic loss of her first born son... "One day, we all planned to share photographs with each other, so I brought the huge album that I had created of our beautiful boy and all the snapshots I had taken of his short 3 months of life. I was so proud to show him off to everyone, as he was so big, healthy and strikingly handsome!! When others shared, especially the families whose child had died at birth, either did not have photographs, or they only had one really poor quality Polaroid of their little angels. I thought to myself, I could have helped them get a beautiful series of photographs. But how would I, how could I?? I was so lost in my own sadness that I could not figure out how it could be done. Well, 9 years later, I was flipping through a Professional Photographers magazine, and lo and behold there was an ad for NILMDTS. I thought to my self with my jaw open, 'Someone has done it! Someone has figured out how to give these families a beautiful photograph of their beloved child that they can cherish for the rest of their lives!' That is when my heart first got the tug to join NILMDTS. God worked on my heart a little at a time, sometimes with bombshells, until I finally decided I was able to do it. And after that, I didn't really believe it until my first session was over. Then, I knew that this is what God wanted me to do."
In Loving Memory of my precious Baby, Zane - November 30, 1999 - March 10, 2000
He changed my life forever!
