Photographing children is not an act of control—it is an act of surrender. Those who believe a great photo hinges upon stillness are missing the point entirely. Children, by nature, are kinetic beings. They experience the world not through stoicism but through somersaults, shrieks, and sprints. Their emotions are symphonic and raw, unedited by decorum or self-awareness. To photograph them authentically, one must relinquish the stifling grip of direction and instead embrace spontaneity as the heartbeat of truth.
The brilliance of Summer Murdock lies in her capacity to dissolve into their orbit. Her images feel lived-in, not constructed. There is no scaffolding of artificial smiles or practiced poses. Instead, her photos vibrate with the same impulsive magic found in treehouse adventures and driveway chalk mosaics. She doesn't extract performances—she uncovers truths already blooming within the child.
The Kinetics of Feeling: Why Motion Unlocks the Heart
There is a reason that motion evokes emotion. Movement is the language of youth—it pulses with honesty. When a child spins until dizzy, there’s no pretense, no calculation. That dizziness is joy incarnate, and when it’s captured mid-spin, with strands of hair catching sunlight and limbs flying askew, it radiates authenticity.
Static images often feel ornamental, like preserved artifacts. But a child caught in motion—arms flailing, knees scraped, grinning through a wind-chapped face—communicates volumes more than a rigid grin ever could. The emotion isn't seated in perfection but in abandon. Motion, when harnessed with an intuitive lens, becomes the symphonic score beneath the image. It whispers stories you didn’t know you needed to hear.
Chaos as Collaborator: When Disorder Deepens the Story
Most adult photographers gravitate toward control—tight compositions, obedient subjects, and calculated lighting. Summer Murdock, on the other hand, invites entropy to the party. Her sessions often unfold like unscripted plays. The plotlines are authored by the children themselves. Her genius lies not in taming this chaos but in dancing with it. She doesn’t mute the cacophony—she tunes into it.
The photograph of a child mid-fall, mouth open in an unguarded laugh, or caught mid-splash as water refracts wildly around them—these are portraits that pulse. The narrative is in the unpredictability. Motion becomes a co-author. Her camera is less a tool of documentation and more a translator of kinetic wonder.
Anticipation: Seeing Before It Happens
You cannot chase these moments—you must feel them arriving. Timing in child photography isn’t just technical; it’s empathic. It requires a near-clairvoyant connection to the emotional rhythms of the subject. Just as a skilled jazz musician senses the note before it’s struck, a masterful child photographer anticipates the emotional beat before it unfurls.
This anticipatory instinct emerges from total immersion. Summer doesn't hover like a disconnected observer. She embeds herself—kneeling in the grass, lying on sidewalks, ducking beneath bedsheets. Her camera doesn’t hover above—it joins the mischief. This proximity forges intimacy, and that intimacy births honesty.
The Art of Intentional Blur: Capturing Essence Over Precision
In an age obsessed with clarity and megapixels, Murdock rebels with grace. She uses intentional blur not as an accident to be lamented, but as a poetic device. A foot in midair, trailing a whisper of motion, or a windswept mane blurred by velocity—these are not flaws; they are echoes. They reveal the movement that was, and they allow the viewer to feel rather than merely see.
Sharpness, after all, is not synonymous with significance. A slightly blurred image of a child cartwheeling across a sun-drenched lawn can summon more emotion than the most clinically sharp portrait. Why? Because blur mimics memory. And memory, like childhood, is rarely static—it is slippery, kaleidoscopic, and constantly in motion.
Color as an Emotional Catalyst
In Murdock’s world, color does not merely decorate—it detonates. It’s not subdued or apologetic. Her photographs often burst with hues that mirror the exuberance of her subjects. Think of cobalt pools glistening under sunlight, fiery red towels billowing like capes, or golden-hour glows that turn limbs to honey.
These colors are more than aesthetic choices—they’re emotional accelerants. They tether the viewer to the mood. A teal sky might evoke nostalgia, a mustard wall might summon whimsy, and the shadowy blues of dusk might draw out wistfulness. In her imagery, color operates like a fifth sense.
Environment as Playground, Not Studio
Traditional portraits often feel like negotiations between parent and photographer: “Stand here,” “Hold still,” “Smile just once.” But Murdock flips this model. She transforms environments into whimsical ecosystems that invite exploration rather than instruction.
Want to photograph your children in a Murdock-inspired way? Don’t corral them into stillness. Curate a moment. A backyard sprinkler. A hammock beneath a tree. A cardboard box fort. The goal isn’t to pose them—it’s to set the stage and then step back.
The more freedom children feel, the more authentic the emotions that surface. Let the camera trail them like a second shadow, recording not directing. The result will be photographs that feel discovered, not manufactured.
Improvisation as Artistic Compass
Summer Murdock’s artistry flows like improvisational jazz—fluid, instinctual, ever-evolving. Each frame is a riff, a responsive chord to a note played by her subject. There’s no sheet music—only the pulse of real-time connection. This is not haphazard—it is fiercely intuitive.
Her compositions emerge in the moment, shaped by shifting light, sudden laughter, or the erratic orbit of a toddler in motion. There’s a feral elegance to it, a kind of visual jazz. She does not try to make something happen. She responds to what already is.
This is why her photographs feel like memories you didn’t realize you missed. They are not artifacts—they are experiences, captured mid-bloom.
Embodied Photography: Merging with the Subject’s World
To truly capture motion and emotion, a photographer must not just observe but embody. This means stepping into the frame metaphorically, becoming part of the environment rather than standing apart from it. Murdock achieves this not by directing, but by mirroring. She crouches, runs, and spins—sharing the child’s pace, their line of sight, their rhythm.
This embodiment is what separates her work from the formulaic. It isn’t about camera gear or presets. It’s about presence. Children can sense authenticity. When the photographer joins the game rather than orchestrates it, barriers crumble. What remains is connection. And that connection is where emotion resides.
The Alchemy of Imperfection
There is profound magic in the imperfect. Skinned knees, wind-knotted hair, upside-down grins—these are no blemishes to be edited out. They are badges of play, of aliveness. Murdock does not sanitize her images. She sanctifies the chaos.
In a culture that often over-polishes childhood—turning it into an Instagram-ready ideal—her work stands as a rebellion. She photographs children as they are: untamed, unfiltered, brimming with strange beauty. Her lens does not chase perfection. It seeks truth.
The Takeaway: Crafting Emotion Through Motion
For those seeking to infuse their photography with deeper emotion, consider this: emotion does not sit still. It dances, skitters, crashes, and pulses. If your lens is rigid, the feeling will flee. But if your lens is nimble—if it breathes with your subject—then it can catch emotion mid-flight.
Stop aiming for perfection. Start seeking rhythm. Let the wind mess tup he hair. Let the light flare. Let the laughter interrupt the shutter. Your job is not to freeze time—it is to join it, mid-motion.
Final Reflection: Photography as an Act of Reverence
In the end, Summer Murdock’s work teaches us that photographing children is not merely about creating pretty pictures. It is about reverence—for their chaos, for their creativity, for their refusal to be pinned down.
Motion is not the obstacle. It is the offering. And when you embrace it fully—when you allow yourself to be swept up in the emotional cyclone of youth—you will find that your photographs stop being images.
They become relics of something real. Something felt. Something alive.
Light in Motion—Harnessing Natural Light for Lyrical Photos
To move with light is to recognize it as a living force—temperamental, whimsical, and breathtakingly sovereign. Light doesn’t simply illuminate. It converses. It disrupts. It elevates. And for photographers like Summer Murdock, it becomes less a passive element and more a principal actor—imbued with narrative weight and spiritual gravity.
Summer doesn’t capture light. She communes with it. Her photographs don't rely on pristine composition or mechanical perfection. They rest upon a trust that natural light will whisper something significant if she listens. Through intuitive alignment with its rhythm, she creates images that breathe. Images that feel like memory, not spectacle.
Her frames are an alchemy of movement and illumination. Children flitting between sun-dappled foliage, dust kicked up by racing feet catching fire in the late afternoon glow, eyelashes glinting gold as a child turns toward the light—these are not posed moments, but lyrical vignettes authored by the sun itself.
The Sun as Collaborator, Not Decoration
In her world, natural light is not a passive wash—it is an interlocutor. Too often, photographers treat sunlight as a flat wash of aesthetic appeal, something that bathes the subject rather than dances with it. Summer treats the sun as a co-creator. Her compositions are not built around it—they are infused by it.
Golden hour, a time romanticized and often overused, becomes something elemental under her lens. Not because of the glow alone, but because of its emotional tenor. This isn’t about the science of softer shadows or warmer hues. It’s about how this transient sliver of the day can excavate sentiment. It’s about how the amber light renders everyday chaos poetic—legs tangled mid-leap, fingers threading through backlit grass, hair suspended like strands of gold in midair.
She captures that brief twilight where the sun and earth hesitate, and in that pause, childhood crystallizes.
Directional Light as a Painter’s Brush
Rather than positioning her subjects with their faces turned sunward, she employs directional light with a finesse that verges on painterly. She often positions herself so that the light skims across the edge of a child’s profile or enters the frame from behind, wrapping the subject in a luminous aura.
This approach—shooting into or across the light—generates flare, haze, and streaks that many would consider imperfections. But in Summer’s universe, they are visceral textures, like brushstrokes on a canvas. They amplify the transitory. They suggest movement even when the subject is momentarily still.
This isn’t a tactic; it’s a temperament. She allows light to slip in diagonally, fracture into prism-colored slivers, or flood her frame with almost spiritual intensity. Her lens becomes a window, not a wall.
Backlight in Motion—The Alchemy of Luminescence
Backlighting is a technique many shy away from due to its inherent unpredictability. But for Summer, that volatility is the allure. She often captures children in mid-motion—hair flaring outward, skirts lifting in play, props like ribbons or balloons catching the light in theatrical gestures. This creates a corona of brilliance that isn’t just aesthetically satisfying—it feels enchanted.
In these moments, the child is not merely photographed. They are exalted. The light doesn’t just outline them; it crowns them. These are the frames that linger in the mind’s eye, not because they are sharp or “technically correct,” but because they possess a soul-scorching sense of wonder.
She uses motion and light not to perfect reality but to transcend it. The result? Photographs that evoke not the moment itself, but how the moment felt—suspended in luminescence, shimmering with memory.
Crafting Atmosphere Through Camera Settings
Her technical choices are intentional but never mechanical. She regularly opts for wide apertures, which isolate subjects in creamy bokeh and allow the light to bleed into the frame like watercolor. This technique softens edges, letting the viewer sink into the mood rather than dissect the detail.
White balance is where she casts her spells. While many rely on automatic settings, she adjusts it manually—sometimes leaning cool to accentuate morning crispness, other times infusing warmth to saturate the emotional tone of dusk.
She doesn’t treat her camera like a machine. She treats it like an instrument—capable of translating atmosphere, tone, and intuition into a single, emotionally charged frame.
Shutter speed becomes a tool for storytelling. A fraction of a second slower, and the movement of limbs blurs slightly, lending a painterly motion to an otherwise mundane act. This is deliberate—it suggests continuity, the impossible task of freezing joy without stilling it.
Subtle Editing for Emotional Resonance
In a world drowning in filters and presets, Summer’s post-processing is an exercise in restraint. She does not over-gloss her images. Instead, she coaxes the existing emotion into ca learer view. Her edits are subtle, always in service to the narrative rather than the aesthetic.
Colors are sometimes muted, washed with nostalgia like old Super 8 films. Other times they burst forth, verdant and sun-soaked, pushing the story forward. But they are never arbitrary. Her choices in color grading, exposure, and contrast exist solely to enhance the photograph’s emotional architecture.
She polishes but never erases. Grain is allowed to breathe. Flaws remain. The final image is not about perfection—it’s about truth filtered through the veil of wonder.
Choreographing Light and Movement
What sets her apart isn’t just technical proficiency. It’s choreography. Her awareness of light is married to an instinctive understanding of how children move. She doesn’t instruct them to pose. She doesn’t interrupt their play. Instead, she positions herself where the light will do the storytelling once they begin.
It’s a game of anticipation. She waits for the child to dart into the shaft of the sun. She predicts the trajectory of a jump. She senses when laughter will tilt the face upward just enough to catch the glow. Her work is a dance—between the photographer, the child, and the light itself.
There’s an improvisational quality here as if each photo is a duet composed in rreal-time The resulting images are alive, unfixed, and echoing with motion.
Inviting the Light into Your Practice
For photographers yearning to imbue their work with this same poetic quality, the first step is observation. Don’t just look for light. Listen to it. Where is it falling? How does it shift? What does it do to fabric, to skin, to water, to shadow?
Move through the space with your subject. Don’t fix them in one place. Allow the light to drape differently across their form as they rotate, skip, or pause. Shift your angle. Shoot from above. Kneel low. Let the light surprise you.
Don’t fear imperfection. A flare across the frame might be the exact element that gives your image a soul. Allow softness, allow blur, allow emotion to win over control.
Experiment with backlight by placing your subject between the camera and the sun. Adjust your exposure to prevent blowout while preserving the glow. Note how hair catches the light, and how outlines become radiant. These are your visual metaphors.
The Light Is Not Static—And Neither Are You
Natural light is capricious. It changes by the hour, the minute, the cloud cover. But therein lies its magic. Instead of fighting for control, surrender to it. Let it guide you. Learn its language and embrace its rhythm.
Don’t just shoot during the golden hour because it’s popular. Shoot then because it speaks to you. Because that hour carries emotional voltage. Because it makes shadows long and light languorous.
Photography is not simply the act of capturing. It is the act of witnessing—of saying, I saw this light, and it moved me. Summer Murdock teaches us that when we learn to dance with light rather than chase it, we create not just pictures, but poetry.
A Final Reflection: Photography as Light-scripted Memory
What makes Summer’s work feel almost otherworldly is its reverence. She reveres light not as a tool, but as a spirit. Her frames are not merely observations—they are invocations. She doesn’t document children at play; she preserves the luminous echo of their joy.
To harness natural light is to live in attunement with the ephemeral. It’s to understand that every photograph is a goodbye. That light, like childhood, is always leaving. And yet, somehow, it remains—etched into pixels, immortalized in hue, remembered in warmth.
In the end, to photograph with light is to love with your whole eyes open. And when light and motion entwine, you don't just take a photo. You compose a hymn.
The Alchemy of Surrender
In the realm of portrait photography, the instinct to choreograph often reigns supreme. We orchestrate light, pose, and setting with an almost surgical precision. But Summer Murdock’s artistry stands in fierce contrast—an ode to the wild, the undone, and the beautifully unpredictable. Her secret isn’t more control; it’s the alchemy of surrender.
The more she releases her grip, the more visceral and soul-soaked her images become. In this act of unfastening, she unearths something few dare to touch: authenticity unfiltered. Her photos don’t just depict—they breathe, thrum, and shimmer with life’s ephemeral poetry.
The Quiet Rebellion Against Convention
Summer’s approach is quietly rebellious. Rather than seeking order, she seeks truth. Rather than framing perfection, she frames essence. This defiance isn’t loud, but it is radical. It requires trust—not just in her subjects, but in herself, and the untamable nature of human moments.
Photographers are often taught to chase symmetry, rule of thirds, and eye contact. But what if the most spellbinding photo is the one where the subject’s back is turned, hair tousled by the wind, walking away into dappled light? What if the masterpiece is the moment no one was looking?
In her world, imperfection is holy. Blur becomes emotion. A sliver of focus amidst motion becomes a metaphor. And this is not laziness—it is intentional ambiguity, wielded like a poet’s enjambment.
Creating Space for the Scene to Unfold
When Summer enters a session, she doesn’t come armed with directives. There are no detailed shot lists or rigid expectations. Instead, she crafts space—mental, emotional, and physical—for spontaneity to flourish.
She might suggest a child explore the backyard or climb a sun-drenched hill. Maybe she’ll invite a family to curl up under quilts in the morning light. But from there, she steps back—not with absence, but with reverent attentiveness.
This kind of session requires presence. Not the performative presence of performance, but the humble, attentive kind—the kind that listens with the eyes and breathes with the shutter.
The Curiosity Mindset
At the core of her process is a philosophical shift: photographing with curiosity, not expectation. This is deceptively simple but transforms everything.
Expectation narrows vision. It plants images in the mind before they existed in the world, creating disappointment when reality refuses to comply. Curiosity, however, expands the frame. It invites exploration. It welcomes surprise.
Curiosity lets you follow the toddler who runs off-path to chase a bird. It tells you to click the shutter not when everything is perfect, but when everything is electric. And it permits you to not know what the final image will be.
Technical Mastery as a Silent Partner
Lest one mistake this philosophy for naivete, let’s be clear: Summer’s work hinges on profound technical mastery. She knows her gear instinctively. Exposure, ISO, aperture, white balance—these are not distractions. They are muscle memory.
And that’s the key. Once the mechanics are second nature, they no longer dominate the mind. They become a silent partner, allowing the photographer’s full attention to rest on emotion, nuance, and instinct.
When a wave crashes, a child laughs mid-spin, or dust floats in golden light, there’s no fumbling. There is only readiness. This readiness is what makes the unrehearsed not only possible but sublime.
The Dance of Movement
One of Summer’s signatures is the dance of movement—hers and her subjects. She doesn’t anchor herself to one spot. She crouches, twirls, lies in the grass, or runs alongside her subjects. Her body becomes a tool, a mirror of their energy.
Photographing motion requires abandon. It also requires timing. A click too late, and the magic evaporates. But her commitment to embodying the experience—physically and emotionally—means her images arrive at the exact beat of the crescendo.
She captures not just the act of movement, but its emotional resonance. The way a girl leaps into water with her arms flung back, or a father spins his son mid-laugh. These are not static moments. They are small universes in kinetic bloom.
Embracing the Edge of the Frame
In her compositions, you’ll find what many might consider mistakes: subjects cropped oddly, faces obscured, focus drifting. But these are not accidents. They are provocations.
Summer’s choice to sometimes place her focal point on a swinging foot rather than a face is a deliberate one. She knows that storytelling doesn’t always require eye contact. Sometimes, the truth of a moment lives in the details we overlook.
By embracing the edges of the frame—both literally and metaphorically—she makes space for ambiguity. AAmbiguity when used well, is an invitation for the viewer to feel rather than just see.
Patience as a Creative Muscle
To craft the unrehearsed requires stamina—not the stamina of action, but of waiting. Summer is a connoisseur of patience. She waits not for perfection, but for resonance.
Children might spiral into chaos. Adults might fumble with awkwardness. Light might shift too quickly. But she stays. She watches. She trusts.
And slowly, the façade breaks. Realness bubbles up. A child becomes lost in play. A couple forgets the camera. The light, at last, brushes across a cheek just right. It’s in this slow unfolding that the most indelible images arise.
The Invisible Photographer
Perhaps the most powerful aspect of Summer’s approach is her ability to become invisible—not absent, but unobtrusive. She doesn’t insert herself into the moment; she dissolves into it.
Her camera becomes an extension of her eye, her intuition. Her presence doesn’t alter the behavior of her subjects. Instead, it blends with it. This is a rare skill—one that requires trust, humility, and profound observation.
When the photographer becomes invisible, the photograph becomes timeless. It carries no trace of manipulation. It reads as truth.
An Invitation to Surrender
If you’ve been taught to control every variable, Summer’s approach might feel like heresy. But her work stands as evidence that surrender is not a lack of intention—it is a different kind of precision.
To begin crafting the unrehearsed, you must unlearn some things. You must allow silence. You must allow unpredictability. You must stop reaching for the perfect image—and instead, become part of the moment that births it.
Here’s a simple invitation: on your next shoot, resist the urge to direct. Choose a setting with soft light. Let your subjects arrive withoutan agenda. Stay alert. Move with them. Speak less. Watch more.
And when the laugh erupts or the wind tousles hair just so, don’t pose—just press the shutter.
The Emotional Signature of Unrehearsed Work
What distinguishes a technically strong photo from a soul-stirring one? Emotion. The unrehearsed carries an emotional signature that can’t be faked or forced.
Summer’s images are not just visual records. They are emotional imprints. They hold a kind of electricity that lingers in the viewer long after the image has faded from sight.
This is the power of letting go—to let in the wild, the true, the exquisitely unscripted.
Where Control Ends, Art Begins
At the edge of control lies something astonishing. When we stop clutching so tightly to outcomes, we open ourselves to grace. And grace, in photography, is that moment where light, movement, and feeling collide in a frame you could never have planned.
Summer Murdock doesn’t just capture photos. She captures the fleeting marrow of experience. Her legacy is not perfection—it’s presence.
So, dare to let go. Let the frame breathe. Let the moment lead. And trust that, in the blur and the brilliance, you’ll find something real—something yours.
Because in the end, it’s not about making people look perfect. It’s about making them feel seen. Especially when they’re not trying.
The Alchemy of Movement—Why Stillness Can Sabotage Emotion
When we think of photographs that resonate, that embed themselves in the folds of memory, they are rarely the frozen, mannequin-like portraits that linger. Instead, it’s the kinetic candids—the airborne curls of hair, the dust kicked up by bare feet, the blur of a shrieked laugh—that truly endure. These are the images that crackle with authenticity. Movement is the vessel through which genuine emotion travels and few have understood this alchemy quite like Summer Murdock.
She doesn't demand her subjects sit still. Quite the opposite—she beckons them to unravel. She invites the whirlwind of childhood: the manic pirouettes, the trampoline levitations, the spaghetti-limbed dashes across sun-scorched yards. And in this messy choreography, she finds something far more eternal than precision—she finds truth.
The Tyranny of the Still Frame
Traditional photography has long exalted the static. From the era of long exposures where subjects were bolted into stillness, to the modern obsession with tack-sharp images, the art form has leaned toward control. Stillness was synonymous with professionalism. But in this craving for exactitude, something essential was often amputated—emotion.
Emotion doesn’t linger politely within stillness. It flares, ivaporates, streaks across the frame, and vanishes if not captured at the right instant. And the paradox of photography is this: to depict life, you must chase what is perpetually escaping. Summer Murdock doesn’t trap her subjects. She liberates them.
Her photographs refuse to freeze life—they electrify it. The blur in her imagery isn’t a flaw; it’s a whisper from the universe saying, “This happened. You were here.” In her hands, motion becomes the very grammar of feeling.
The Sacred Chaos of Childhood
Children, in their uncurated wonder, are agents of entropy. They are not made for symmetry and compliance. Ask them to sit still, and you wring out their spirit. Ask them to “say cheese,” and you watch the light dim behind their eyes. But offer them a cape, a muddy puddle, or a handful of dandelion fluff, and they transform into uncontainable poems.
Summer Murdock harnesses this intrinsic chaos. Rather than wrangling children into aesthetic submission, she meets them in their kinetic kingdom. She crouches to their level, sidesteps predictability, and enters their slipstream. She doesn’t impose herself upon them. She orbits them.
Her philosophy isn’t about extracting an image—it’s about excavating a moment. And moments, especially those gilded with emotion, do not wait politely for instruction.
Anticipation Over Control
The mastery of motion doesn’t begin with the click of the shutter—it begins with the ability to predict. Like a hawk scanning for a thermal current, Summer senses the tremor before the eruption. A shoulder hunching just before a cartwheel. A glance darting toward a nearby puddle. Her genius lies not in reacting, but in pre-reacting.
Technical prowess plays its part. A nimble shutter speed paired with a fluid ISO ensures readiness for the unexpected. But more crucial than settings is sensibility. You must become fluent in the rhythms of human behavior, especially the mercurial language of children.
This requires presence. Not the kind that hovers impatiently, but the quiet, attuned kind. The kind that watches without interference, that breathes with the subject, that listens to the silence between the giggles.
Letting Go of Precision Fetishism
There’s a prevailing myth in photography that the image must be surgically crisp, each pixel in pristine alignment. Summer Murdock dismantles this notion with every frame she composes. In her work, imperfection doesn’t mar the image—it defines it. A blurred hand mid-wave, a sun-drenched haze melting detail, the partial obscuring of a child’s face behind a billow of hair—these aren’t errors. They are expressions.
Photography, at its most potent, isn’t about replication—it’s about translation. And emotion, raw and unscripted, doesn’t always fit neatly into focus.
By welcoming imperfection, you open the door to nuance. You let the frame breathe. You allow the photograph to feel rather than just show.
Light as a Narrative Companion
Movement without evocative light is like a melody without harmony. Summer doesn’t just capture motion; she illuminates it with atmosphere. Her images glow not because of post-production trickery but because she chases the kind of light that possesses the soul.
Backlight streaming through tangled curls. Golden hour enveloping a child mid-jump. Window light painting half a face in chiaroscuro. She doesn’t command light; she courts it. Her understanding of illumination transcends utility. It becomes a character.
Light, in her world, is more than exposure—it’s emotional texture. It doesn’t just show the subject—it reveals their mood, their moment, their magic.
Intentional Blur and Visual Velocity
One of Summer's signature techniques is the delicate dance between clarity and blur. Instead of freezing every atom in place, she often lets movement stain the frame. A trailing limb, a spinning dress, a water droplet mid-arc—they’re allowed to smudge, to bleed into the image.
This creates visual velocity—a sense that the photograph hasn’t ended. It lingers. It pulls the viewer forward, compelling them to mentally complete the motion. In this way, her photographs become participatory. You don’t just see them; you experience them.
It’s a brave choice to let go of sharpness. But in doing so, she gains something rare: dimensional emotion. Her images don’t sit quietly on a page. They echo.
Environment as a Co-Author
Summer Murdock doesn’t rely on elaborate props or sterile studios. Instead, she lets the world collaborate. A wind-blasted hill. A sun-dappled living room. A murky swimming pool. These aren’t just settings—they’re co-authors.
In her imagery, the environment isn’t a backdrop—it’s a character. The texture of grass, the vastness of the sky, and the messiness of lived-in rooms—all contribute to the emotional tonality of the frame.
To emulate this, resist the urge to curate every detail. Instead, lean into what’s naturally there. Let the wind muss the hair. Let the puddle splash mud. Let the story write itself.
Cultivating the Unscripted
What makes Summer’s work so hauntingly beautiful is its resistance to the overproduced. In a world saturated with posed perfection, her work feels like a rebellion—a quiet, lyrical protest that champions the unscripted.
She doesn’t manipulate. She orchestrates. Like a conductor attuned to the improvisations of jazz, she allows for deviation, surprise, and fluctuation. And in that allowance, she uncovers what most photographers miss: the soul of the subject.
This is not a technique—it’s a temperament. To cultivate it, one must unlearn the need to control. One must become comfortable with serendipity. One must surrender.
Becoming Invisible
Perhaps the most radical element of Summer Murdock’s style is her ability to become invisible. Not in the literal sense, but emotionally. She doesn’t impose her presence. She diffuses it. She blends into the moment so completely that children forget they’re being watched.
This invisibility is earned. It requires trust, empathy, and patience. It means observing longer than you shoot. It means understanding that the best image might arrive ten minutes after you stop trying to make one.
Invisibility isn’t passivity. It’s reverence.
Invitation to the Photographer
If you are a photographer standing at the precipice between posed perfection and kinetic authenticity, take this as an invitation. Step into the whirlwind. Let go of the checklist. Embrace the wild tempo of life as it truly is—unpolished, unfiltered, unplanned.
Prepare your settings, yes. But more importantly, prepare your heart. You are not just capturing a subject—you are listening to their story told in giggles and gestures, in flails and flights.
Let go of the obsession with control. Instead, chase resonance. Chase the moment where the frame pulses with life. When that happens, your photograph stops being an image and starts becoming a memory.