2024 Perfect {Professional} Headshots Coming on April 1

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It’s almost spring! You know what that means…slush, mud, and HEADSHOTS.

On April 14, 2024 (ONLY), Steven Cervantes of Salon Bella and I are teaming up once again to offer a day of easy-peasy, sit-back-and-relax, customized portraits to check that “Get Professional Headshot” item off your to-do list.

Steven is in charge of hair and makeup, and this is not to make our subjects ultra-glam or even all that fancy - just polished, and confident that they’re going to look great. (This goes for all genders - trust me, even the most macho of guys benefits from matte, even skin tone and expertly coiffed hair.) I’m in charge of the portraits, which we’ll design together in order to make sure we get what you want our of your session. You can expect to spend 90-120 minutes in the comfort of Salon Bella on April 14 - after which you’re free to go grab your dancing shoes and head out on the town, because you’re going to look fabulous!

Each session also includes a prep guide, an online gallery, and a complete set of finished high-resolution images via download. The all-inclusive fee is $499. Reservations are required, and a $100 deposit is collected when your session is reserved. The balance is due at or before the time of the session.

In an age of LinkedIn iphone selfies, stand out in the crowd with a killer professional portrait. It’s a worthy investment in yourself that, quite frankly, you deserve. I also always try to remind people that in most cases, if your headshots are for work, they’re considered a business expense that can serve as a tax write-off!

I hope this is the year we see you there! Ready to book yours? Keep scrolling!

Beautiful Wellness {In Memoriam: Monica Bartolatz-Sawyer}

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I met Monica the way a lot of Fairbanksians did in the early 2010s - at the Alaska Family Health and Birth Center. Monica and Jamie WERE the front desk. They were the smiling faces that everyone saw first when they walked in to the birth center for the first time (and likely every time after that).

Monica with a table of her Alaska Earth Mama remedies at the opening of the Alaska Family Health and Birth Center’s then-brand new facility in winter 2012, which was also my first and, to date, only First Friday show. {iphone photo}

Looking back at this picture, the words and feelings I most associate with her are gentle and passionate - though she was soft-spoken (literally; I don’t know that she was capable of yelling), she had an understated determination to pursue her passion for sharing wellness and was simply undeterred in her pursuit. Delays aplenty, discouragement unavoidable on occasion; but never waylaid for long. First it was Alaska Earth Mamas, naturally inspired and locally sourced remedies lovingly made in her tiny kitchen while she worked days at the birth center front desk and parented (and even for a while homeschooled) her son as a solo parent.

Later, her business evolved into Just The Tips Restaurant & Wellness Co - first a bright green drive-thru hut on College Road, and then a real brick and mortar location in the small yellow-and-white vintage house off Illinois Street. I want to describe it as having cult-like status in Fairbanks, but the truth is I think it was far too well-known to be cultish. It was coveted, for sure. People bemoaned the fact there was only one of her, the mastermind chef behind recipes that she never even wrote down. But it was always worth the wait. People clamored for more.

I knew Monica best back in the Earth Mama days, both of us in the early days of our small businesses. We collaborated - I took photos; she made carefully crafted herbal bath teas and nipple salve for me to gift to my birth clients.

One shoot we did was during an early spring forage of cottonwood buds - in April, in fact. My daughter, who is now 9, was just a toddler along for the ride, strapped to my back in a carrier. It was a gloriously sunny evening in early breakup - that time when it somehow seems totally reasonable to expect the world to burst into bloom at any moment, even though you’re still almost knee-deep in slush.


Even though I’m known for commenting (loudly) that spring is, hands down, the ugliest time of year in Fairbanks, it was really, really beautiful.

So, so many years later, the editors at Edible Alaska put out a call for images that might be a good fit for the cover of their spring Breakup/Green-up issue. They selected this image of Monica’s palm full of sticky cottonwood buds.

The one and only time I was in Just the Tips, in January, I got to tell Monica she was going to be on the cover of the spring issue. She came out from kitchen to give me a hug and told me that the news made her night. It had been a while, and it was so nice to see her (especially since I had something fun and exciting to share). It’s always such a great feeling to see old photos getting new life, and it was a sense of excitement that we shared.

Monica died, very suddenly, in February. The community around her is devastated, and her loss will be keenly felt always. But I think April is perhaps when I’ll think of her the most.

In Memoriam: The Barry Family's Legacy at the Fairbanks Children's Museum

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Last summer I wrote here about the Barry family and their tragic deaths. They were Fairbanksians at heart even though they had migrated to Minnesota, the state of Riana’s birth and childhood. When they died last April, it shook our world in Alaska, too.

Sean and Riana met in Alaska, married at the Georgeson Botanical Garden, and made their first homes together here. Both Shiway and Sadie were born at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital. And now, Birch Hill Cemetery is their final resting place.

To memorialize and remember the Barrys here in Fairbanks, close friends installed a hand-built bench and planted flowering trees at the playground at Ken Kunkel Community Center in Goldstream Valley. And we raised almost $40,000 to create an endowment at the Fairbanks Children’s Museum.

The Shiway and Sadie Scholarship Fund at the Fairbanks Children’s Museum will fund scholarships for FCM memberships, summer camps, homeschool enrichment programs, birthday parties, and more, in perpetuity. And the fund isn’t done growing. Now any donation made to the Fairbanks Children’s Museum is given the option to direct all or part of their donation to the principal of the endowment, which will in turn continue to fund more and more services through FCM as it grows.

Since I had written about our GoFundMe here and on my Facebook page before, I wanted to come back and give the update that we did it. Thank you to Kris Capps at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner for her coverage of our efforts and our success, and to each and every person who shared the fundraiser on social media, mentioned it to friends, or donated money to the fund.

I also wanted to share the news in a different light as well - for those out there who may be able to Pick-Click-Give or otherwise donate to community nonprofits, the endowment is a powerful new way to fiscally support the museum’s mission to support children and families in Fairbanks, now and in the future. My absolute favorite thing about the endowment is that it is literally the gift that keeps giving…and giving, on and on. It can become a forever part of our community, just as the memory of the Barrys is for those of us who knew them.

Katie Barry poses with a check for the final $7,550 raised, from a fundraiser in Minnesota organized by Riana’s family.

Adventures in Portraiture || My Attempt at the Up-Close Headshot

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Odds are, you’ve seen a Martin Schoeller portrait, even if you didn’t realize it at the time.

He’s done series of portraits of the housing-insecure in LA, bodybuilders, NASCAR drivers, identical twins, and something like four U.S. presidents in addition to a slew of celebrities. I can’t actually post any of his work here because, you know, copyright, but I trust that Google can help you out here. (I actually find it very entertaining that the thumbnail Google begins to auto-fill when you search for Martin Schoeller is not a photo of Martin Schoeller, but is instead a headshot of Brad Pitt that Martin Schoeller photographed. In short, no, he’s not Brad Pitt.) His portrait of Jeff Koons is to portraiture what Salt Bae is to seasoning.

Anyway, I find his signature style of portraiture - very close up and meticulously lit - mesmerizing. There’s frustratingly little reliable information out there on the interwebs about how one would replicate it. But I’ve strategically paused and screen-grabbed from enough interviews and news coverage he’s done over the years to feel like I had a general idea of his set-up…enough, at least, to try it.

The assignment for the photography class I was taking at UAF this semester was to create a series of 12, theme and subject of our choosing. I figured it was as good a time as any.

In my world, the most willing and amply available models are kids, so that’s what I went with. (If you wish to learn from my mistakes, I would tell you that it turns out kids aren’t actually the ideal subjects for a meticulously arranged and minorly claustrophobic set that includes a “ceiling” reflector held aloft by light stands, BUT THAT’S ANOTHER BLOG ENTRY.)

I give you, Before and After.


Ten years ago today, I became a birth photographer. [In memoriam: the Barry Family]

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June 19, 2012 was the day I first photographed a birth with my own camera, a business license, and a steadfast supporter as my client. It was the day I became a birth photographer.

This is still one of my favorite pictures I’ve ever taken.

That’s Sadie, less than an hour old, staring deeply into the eyes of her father, Sean.

And when I say I had a steadfast supporter in my client - trust me, that’s putting it mildly. Without Riana’s help and support, I never would have been able to continue photographing births during those early years.


To be totally honest with you, I may not have ever noticed the tenth anniversary of my business was starting me in the face; I’m not particularly good with those kind of milestones - every year my husband and I realize at some point later in the summer that we both forgot our anniversary, again. And honestly, I wish with all my heart that this anniversary too would have passed in the background of the crazy chatter of our lives, that nothing would have made it stand out in the absolutely heartbreaking way that it has.



On April 20, 2022, Sadie Barry and her family - her mother Riana, her father Sean, and her big sister Shiway - were murdered in their beds while they slept.



The circumstances surrounding their senseless, unjustified, and untimely deaths are not my story to tell. But I have been encouraged to talk about their lives and the sheer beauty they manifested in the world around them.

I’m still finding it really hard to do that - to get the words out. I hope I can come back and add more later; to continue to write about them, and say their names aloud. I hope that you, reader, remember them; remember that even though they had moved away from Fairbanks, they still had one foot on the ground in Alaska, always; remember seeing them at parks, playdates, La Leche League meetings, Big Latch On events, the Children’s Museum, homeschooling groups, and at Fairbanks’ premiere social hangout, Fred Meyer.

I hope you remember them.



To honor the memory of the Barry family, a small group of dedicated loved ones and I are working hard to establish an endowment at the Fairbanks Children’s Museum to fund scholarships in their name, indefinitely.*

To make the endowment a reality, we have to raise $25,000 as a minimum investment. (We’re at about $10k at the time of this writing.) Please consider donating to our GoFundMe - even $5 will help us reach this goal.


Please, if you can, share this with anyone who knew the Barrys - and anyone you know who wants to support the museum in an especially meaningful way.


*The Barry Family Endowment will be fiscally managed by the Alaska Community Foundation, and the annual dividends will fund the Shiway & Sadie Scholarships for annual family memberships, summer camp tuition, and homeschool curriculum support at the Fairbanks Children’s Museum, by application or nomination. In the first year alone, the endowment will find at least 10 scholarships for annual membership. Still curious? Please feel welcome to contact me with any and all endowment-related questions, and I’ll be more than happy to answer them.


Additional information:

Kris Capps at the Daily News-Miner: Family Honored with Endowment for Fairbanks Children’s Museum

Dougherty Funeral Home obituary with a beautiful slideshow


Legacy.com obituary as published in the DNM

Marissa + Colton | Summer Solstice Wedding at Aurora Pointe

Marissa and Colton waited a long time to tie the knot. A long time. As in, they hired me almost two years before they wed. The first bit was simply their own planning in advance…the second was the pandemic. After hard deliberations they decided to delay their wedding from Solstice 2020 to Solstice 2021 in the hope that their friends and loved ones would be able to safely attend by then.

And they were. It was a joyous (yet still cautious) affair FULL of love. These kids were finally able to say “I do,” and everyone in attendance felt the weight of a long, hard year+ lift, if just for those few hours we were all there to celebrate Marissa & Colton.

Tiffany + Aaron | A Remote Alaskan Elopement

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Tiffany grew up spending school years with her mom in California, and summers in Alaska with her dad. After COVID made it clear that a big, traditional wedding was not going to happen, she and her fiance Aaron decided that the best way to celebrate their vows was to honor that special place in her life by arranging a small elopement at her grandparents’ cabin on the Tanana River. As in, we traveled there by boat. :)- And the bride caught a fish 30 minutes after the ceremony.

Another new experience for me and my intrepid second shooter - and a great one at that. Stay tuned, because photos from this wedding may soon appear in an future issue of Alaska Bride magazine!