SaraSerkez
I photograph newborns in New Jersey, teach photographers how to charge what they're worth, and make music at two in the morning. I'm also a licensed therapist, and I wrote a memoir about all the years I spent telling everyone I was fine.
About
The short version
Second marriage, seventh life, two kids, one camera I'm unreasonably attached to.
I live in New Jersey. I photograph other people's babies, I teach photographers how to run a business that actually pays them, and I write about what it actually costs to keep all of that running, usually before I've decided whether I'm ready to. My sessions run on feelings and my business runs on boundaries, which is what happens when a therapist buys a camera.
I'm a recovering perfectionist in the sense that I still am one and I've just stopped pretending otherwise. It's why I'll rebuild an entire setup because the light shifted two inches, and why nobody but me will ever know I did.
If you found me from a post I made on the internet, welcome. It gets weirder from here.
Photography
Newborns, babies, and the year that goes too fast
Studio newborn sessions, hospital visits in the first days, milestones, cake smashes, families outdoors, and the occasional couple who wants pictures where nobody is crying. Calm, slow, unhurried, and built around your baby instead of a shot list.
Parents show up exhausted and leave with pictures they'll still be crying over in fifteen years. You don't have to be photogenic. You just have to show up.
The book
Chronically Unbroken What Surviving Teaches Me About Living
In revision, represented by a literary agent
Some books are about surviving. This one is about what I was building while I was busy trying not to die.
I've survived a lot. The greatest hits: childhood trauma, a broken marriage, several chronic illnesses, brain surgeries, sexual assault, and bacterial meningitis that nearly finished the job. For years I performed fine for everyone around me while my body staged increasingly dramatic rebellions against the performance, and somewhere in the middle of all of it I worked out that survival was never the point. The point was the life I kept building anyway.
The book runs in two movements. The first is survival, one crisis stacked on the next until the night it nearly stopped for good. The second is everything I built after I stopped waiting to be healed before I'd let myself live, which turned out to be slower and less glamorous than anybody wants it to be and also the only part that mattered. It doesn't end in resolution. Where it does end is the part I'd rather you read than have summarized for you on a website.
I'm also a licensed therapist, which mostly means I can name exactly what's happening to me while it's happening and still not be able to stop it. I'm funny about things that aren't funny, and honest about the things most people only say in private. If you've ever been told your pain wasn't real, your body wasn't trustworthy, or your story wasn't worth telling, this is the book that says you were right the whole time. It isn't a story about a life already lived. It's about a life still in progress, and the still-happening is the whole point.
One email when the book has a release date. Nothing else, ever.
- GenreMemoir
- StatusAgented, in revision
Writing
The newsletter
I write on Substack. Motherhood, work, the body, the mess, and the jokes I probably shouldn't make. No inspirational quotes over sunsets.
It's free to read, and it's where chapters get tested on people who are kind enough to tell me when something isn't landing.
Nobody handed me a life. I built one out of the parts I had left.
Recent themes: how a licensed therapist ended up behind a camera, what a business costs you before it pays you, and why "you look great, though" isn't the compliment people think it is.
Music
The music
I write and produce my own songs. Two singles are out so far, Sunflower Girl and Goddess on the Rise, both from this year.
I learned production the way I learned photography, alone and at night and badly for a long time before any of it started sounding like something. It's the only thing I make that isn't for anyone else, which is probably why I keep going back to it.
Teaching
Newborn and Milestone Masterclasses
It started with photographers sliding into my DMs asking how I did it. Now it's a full curriculum, because "just charge more" isn't actually advice.
- 01Posing and safety with newborns, start to finish
- 02Light, setup, and the gear you genuinely need
- 03Editing that looks like you and not like a preset
- 04Pricing your work without apologizing for it
- 05Client emails, contracts, and templates you can steal
It comes with a workbook, prompts, pricing breakdowns, and the email templates I use every week.
Find me
Come say hi
Bookings, teaching questions, press, or just to tell me a chapter wrecked you. All of it is welcome.