40 Years | A Personal Reflection from CM Bryson Photography

On August 21st, I turn 40.

I've been sitting with that for a while now, trying to figure out how to write about it honestly — not the highlight reel version, but the real one. So this is less a business blog post and more a diary entry I decided to make public. If you've followed along with CM Bryson Photography for a while, or if you're a client who's only ever seen me behind a camera at your session, I want you to walk away from this knowing me a little better — as a person, as an artist, and as someone who's spent the last year rebuilding a business and a life at the same time.

Last August

A year ago, on my 39th birthday, I was in a really good place. I'd fallen in love with pickleball months earlier and was often playing twice a day. My health was finally in a good spot after a long stretch of being really sick the year before. Lira — my Boston Terrier, my heart dog for almost ten years — was doing well too. Eating, playful, loving her weekly trips to Canine Country. My business was having the best year it had ever had. I felt like I was truly connecting with clients, meeting fantastic dogs, and getting opportunities I'd worked years toward. I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

I had no idea that less than two weeks later, everything would change.

Losing Lira

Lira passed on September 2nd, 2025 — a few months before what would have been her tenth birthday. I don't have human children, but losing her felt to me like losing a child. It felt like having the rug pulled out from under me.

I was unmoored. Shut down. For a while, I had a hard time even photographing other people's dogs, because all I wanted was my own dog back.

We had already decided we were keeping Poppy — a puppy we'd fostered a few months before losing Lira, rescued at about two weeks old from a breeder cruelty case in North Georgia, along with her mother, Dolly. Poppy isn't a replacement for Lira. No dog could be. But I think she became the snuggliest dog in our house after we lost Lira, because Lira used to sit with me constantly, and Poppy does too. Having that warm little body close to me again mattered more than I can really explain.

Grief also brought a decision Renee and I had talked about for years: while we had Lira, we didn't really travel anywhere she couldn't come with us. We used to say that when we eventually lost her, we'd start traveling again — and we always hoped that day was a decade away. It wasn't. So one of the first things we did after losing her was book Italy for December 2025. Then Iceland, with the Unleashed Education photography group, for this coming October. Then Egypt for December 2026. And more recently, Ireland — which we left for on August 8th, and just arrived back home.

When we went to Italy that December, I was still so shut down that I only brought my phone. Over a week and a half in one of the most photogenic countries in the world, I took maybe seven pictures.

Coming Back to Myself

Going into 2026, I had big plans for my business — and I just didn't feel like doing them. I gave my clients everything I had all year, but if I'm honest, I was operating a little on autopilot. Enjoying the dogs, enjoying getting to know my clients, enjoying the work — but still seeing it as work.

Coming back to the Embark photography challenges this year was part of what pulled me out of it — I went looking for that creative spark again, a reason to pick up my camera just to make something, not to run a business.

But the real turning point came recently, when we took Poppy and her mother Dolly to photograph together in Old Town Conyers. There was no business reason to be there. It wasn't for advertising, it wasn't for content — it was just my camera in my hands, for me. That's when I felt it again: why I fell in love with this in the first place.

Since then, I'm back to noticing compositions everywhere — driving somewhere, walking somewhere, and instinctively thinking, I could put a dog right there. I'd stopped doing that for a while without even realizing it. Getting it back feels like getting a piece of myself back.

There's a part of this I still carry some regret over. When Lira was a puppy, I was at the very beginning of my photography business, and my camera was in my hands constantly. I have a photo of her the day she was born. I photographed her with her mother as she grew, and outside playing with her littermates. I am so grateful for every one of those images — because all the photographs of Lira that will ever exist have already been created. Almost a year out from losing her, there will be no new ones. Ever. That's a strange, hard thing to acknowledge.

Poppy's puppyhood looks nothing like that. She came to us with a severe upper respiratory infection, and for a while we weren't even sure we were keeping her. By the time we decided — yes, she's ours — there was such a short window before we lost Lira that I never picked the camera back up. Somewhere in there, I'd let my camera become something that only came out for paid work, and I stopped documenting my own life. I have a handful of phone photos of Poppy as a puppy. That's it. I almost wish I'd hired someone else to do it for me, but I don't know that I was even in a place to make that call. I'm still working on giving myself grace for that — understanding that we can only do what we have the capacity to do in the moment we're in. Puppyhood doesn't wait for you to be ready, and I know that better than almost anyone. I still missed it. That's part of why Conyers meant so much — it was, in a way, catching up with the puppy I hadn't fully documented, and finally giving Poppy her own story instead of just being the dog who helped me survive losing Lira.

What Changed in How I Work

Losing Lira changed something concrete in how I work with clients, too. I'm including more images in galleries now — the kind of "imperfect" outtakes I might have deleted before. When I photographed Gus the corgi, I kept the frames where his ears were laid back and relaxed, not the fully upright, alert ones — because that's how Lira's ears usually sat. And hearing from Gus’s mom about how much those image in particular looked like her boy, those are the images I want people to have.

I think about the TV in my living room, which is almost never actually "on" — it just plays through my camera roll while I work at home during the day. They're not incredible portraits. They're just little memories playing my Amazon photos back up. That's what I want to make sure I'm giving my clients now, alongside the portraits that belong on the wall — the little details that capture the whole of who their dog is, not just the polished version.

Forty

If I'm honest about turning 40, there was a bit of a midlife panic somewhere in my 39th year — the moment I realized the wrinkles on my forehead weren't just showing up when I made a face. I had Botox injections twice this year. I've since canceled my upcoming appointments.

Some of that shift came from my dad's health this year — a Parkinson's diagnosis, a heart procedure, another surgery. It put things in real perspective. Life can be short, and getting to grow older is a gift, not something to fight. I've decided I want to enjoy it.

I spent my thirties figuring out who I am, and I care so much less now about what other people think. That's freeing in a way I didn't expect — to just be myself, do the things I want to do, say what I want to say. I'm lucky to have a marriage that makes that possible — a partner who fully supports everything I do, picks up the slack on the days my health isn't cooperating, and loves the same things I love. I'm working on a real gratitude practice these days, partly because it helps me feel better in my body, and partly because I have so much worth being grateful for.

I'm also, right now, dealing with some health issues again — exhausted, run-down, not myself in a way that's frustrating after finally feeling strong and energized. I'm doing the work: seeing doctors, taking medication, doing what I can to support my body back to that place. It's not resolved. But I'm in it, actively, instead of ignoring it.

Packing for Ireland

When I started packing for Ireland, my first thought was: of course I'm bringing my camera. And my Insta360, because I want to create real memories of this trip — not just survive it with my phone in my pocket.

That's the clearest sign to me that I'm on the other side of the hardest part of this year. Not because the grief is gone — it isn't, and I don't think it's supposed to be — but because I want to see again. To document. To be present enough in my own life to want proof of it.

If I could say one thing to myself on my 39th birthday — the version of me who had no idea what the next two weeks would hold — it would be this:

Appreciate every time Lira is sitting with you.

Looking Toward Forty

I started CM Bryson Photography in February 2017, when I was 30 years old. In a strange way, my business is turning a corner right alongside me — both of us reaching a new decade, both of us having been tested this year and coming out the other side more honest about what we're doing and why.

I don't know exactly what my forties hold. But I know what I'm committing to.

I'm committing to keeping my camera in my hands more — not just at paid sessions, but in the everyday, ordinary moments of my own life. Phone photos count. Big camera photos count. Insta360 video clips count. What matters is that I don't let another puppyhood, another quiet Sunday morning, another afternoon on the couch slip by undocumented, the way I did with Poppy. I want the same thing for my clients. I still want you to hire a professional for the four key moments in your dog's life — as a puppy, in their prime, in their senior years, and at the end. But I also want you documenting them all the time, all of the in between. Both things matter. Neither one replaces the other.

I'm also committing to staying curious, creatively — to keep pushing myself the way the Embark challenges have pushed me this year, to keep asking myself to see differently and try things I haven't tried.

I want to keep noticing the dog-shaped compositions in ordinary places. I want to keep the outtakes. I want to keep packing the camera — every camera, all the time. And I want to keep appreciating the ones who are sitting with me right now, while they're here.

And to close, here are a few photos from my trip to Ireland - of course including a couple dogs we spotted along the way.