After several weeks of quarantine during the COVID-19 outbreak, Nashville-based wedding, portrait, editorial and commercial photographer Heather Durham—and most everyone else in the photography industry—has been becoming more and more creatively restless.

“I miss having my camera in hand. I miss working with a creative team,” says Durham. “I even miss editing. However, I’ve been looking for the silver lining in all of this—grasping hold of more family time at home and dinners together without rushing off to an activity, more down time to check off the ‘To Do List’ items that have been on the back burner for way too long, spending more time exercising outdoors and the rare opportunity to pursue a few personal projects.”

Durham also decided to start creating whatever she could with whatever she had available to her.

“One of the disappointments of school being canceled was my teenage daughter, Olivia, not being able to go to prom or have her cotillion presentation, both of which we had purchased new dresses for.” Mother and daughter decided to make lemonade out of lemons and do a shoot with an Amsale white cotillion dress they purchased from Bella Bridesmaids.

“It was Easter week and I was inspired by my daughter being a young woman now, as well as by the dogwoods in full bloom all around my neighborhood.” Durham spent an hour one afternoon foraging branches to use in the shoot, set up a white seamless backdrop in her garage, and opened the garage door to let all the beautiful natural light spill in for the shoot.

“But, before I started the first of what was to become three ‘Garage Sessions,’” she explains, “a portrait idea came to me while I was doing my daughter’s makeup in my bathroom and styling her hair for the shoot. I decided to turn on the shower, let it steam up on the door, then turn the water off and put her in there for a watery, textured, moody portrait of her face.”

It was an extraordinarily Good Friday spending time with my daughter and bringing her into my business world of celebrating all things feminine and beautiful.

(Photographed with a Nikon D850 camera and 50mm lens at f/4.0.)

Check out more Photos of the Day, and email submissions to jacqueline.tobin@emeraldx.com