Nationwide

Dulcis Gratia Photo (VA)

Instagram: @dulcisgratiaphoto

Homebase: Virginia

Travel Policy: While currently based out of Virginia, I often take on weddings in surrounding or nearby states including Maryland, North Carolina, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. If you happen to be located outside of these, I’d welcome the chance to unlock a new state!

For those new to me and newly discovering my work, welcome! My name is Amanda and I’m a wedding, family, and couple’s photographer based out of central Virginia. Dulcis Gratia — Latin for “sweet grace” — is the product of a continual search for beauty and an enthusiasm to accept grace where it is offered.

Born and raised in the hills of the Blue Ridge, I grew up surrounded and inspired by the beauty found in little towns and expansive landscapes. From a young age I sought to capture in lasting photograph the memories and moments that otherwise fade with time. Possessing a strong desire to hold onto what eventually becomes forgotten, I fostered an eye and a heart for what lies in the details, the small moments, the occasions that arrest our attention through their simplicity, their authenticity, and their beauty.

When not behind the camera, you can catch me enjoying a classic book, baking an unexplored dessert, painting a new landscape, going on a walk, or even making simple rosaries (a great gift and a labour of love!). We were born to participate in creation and what a gift it has been to meet the Lord in his through these small movements!

I believe one of the best ways to get to know a person is by seeing them through the creative work that moves them. For me that would mean the simple pleasures found in watching Good Will Hunting (it’s a birthday tradition!), collecting old and new photographs in boxes by the dozen, reading a Graham Greene novel, or listening to the vulnerable lines of a Dermot Kennedy song. Like most, films, books, and music speak to my heart in continually profound and surprising ways, always offering a chance for encounter and a new light by which to see the world and to find the One who was creating long before we dreamed to do the same. I could talk for days about the brilliance of Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, the heart-wrenching beauty of Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley, the thrill of Miller’s Moneyball or the tragedy of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Beauty abounds and what a grace it is to be able to encounter it again and again.