The photographs from Grande Prairie photographer Cassandra Jones have a fairy tale, dream-like quality, but to her, it’s all magic.
Jones is the creative mind behind Noelle Mirabella Photography, where her portraits have earned her not only national but also international recognition.
“My background is in psychology, so I didn’t even think I had being an artist in me,” she said.
She said she was brought into the world of photography from a time of “pure sadness.”
“I was working on my master’s, I was pregnant with my first daughter, and she ended up being stillborn.
“I was very sad; I was beyond sad, I was the most broken, soul destroyed, just crying every minute of every hour, of every day.
“I tried going to therapy, and it did not work; I had a therapist that I really didn’t connect with.
“I need something else to force me to get out of bed, and reconnect with the world again.”
Jones bought a camera and forced herself to leave her home each day to find beauty.
“I wasn’t allowed to come home until I captured a photo that captured beauty, so it could be just the way the light penetrated the leaf on a branch, or just little tiny things.”
Photography had become her therapy, and “I’ve been in therapy every day since.”
After years working on multiple degrees for psychology, she decided to pursue photography as a career.
“My family thought it was crazy.”
Now she is able to tell stories through her lens.
“I get to photograph people and tell their stories, stories that I feel like change the world every single day.
“I get to connect with people all over the world.
“I get to teach people how to look for and make magic and create what they hold in their hearts and their minds and their souls.”
She has taught her style of photography all over the world including hosting workshops in places such as New Zealand and England.
Jones says all of her photos are created very deliberately, and she doesn’t just go into any location and promise a photo.
She said she is constantly scouting locations for her photos.
“I always teach people to look for magic in the least likely places, so places that are the most grand and large and beautiful to your eyeballs might not have the best light and set up the best for photography.
“I honour the underdog of locations because it’s not necessarily where the tourists would go, but it’s what creates the most magical landscape for the type of art I make.”
For Jones, after the shutter closes and the editing is done, her photos don’t live only digitally; she prints her photos.
“The thought of not printing actually breaks my heart into a million pieces,” she said.
“Hard drives fail, you’re not going to go into your computer and necessarily look at those images; nothing beats seeing that work printed and displayed and something that you can look at every single day.”
She said her home is filled with photos of her children and family members.
“It’s so important and also for your own self to have pictures of the people that you love the most, or that you admire, or people that you respect, people in your inner circle.
“I think when we lose somebody that is really important to us, that’s when it becomes very apparent that those photographs are incredibly important. What is the first thing you do when you lose someone? I feel like you go through looking for evidence of that love and that person was real, and that’s what photographs are.”
She said when her mother got sick, she wished she would have taken photos of her sooner.
“We always think we have more time, and we always think, oh, I’ll get to it.”
She was able to take photos of her mother before she passed, and now cherishes those photos.
“I look at those images, actually every single day.”
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