A mother of four, photographer, nature lover. Someone trying to make sense of it all, through photos and stories. 

I try to be free in all senses of the word, so I made the leap and now work with what I love doing; taking pictures, storing this life in moments, both for myself and for clients. My heart is in photographing birth and motherhood, but I take on just about any photography job. 
(See my birth photos at www.birth.no and the rest of my work portfolio at www.mariavatne.no.)

I live on a farm in Norway with my man Nik and my children Ronja, Freja, Falk and Ulv, plus a bunch of animals. We grow our own food as far as the seasons allow it, we don't go to kindergarten, the three youngest ones will be homeschooled.

We govern our own lives, we strive for independence, we want to be in this life wild and free and full of love.

We've got to get ourselves back to the garden...

...sang Joni Mitchell, and although this isn't exactly Woodstock (which her song is about), it still is a groundbreaking project for us - in literal terms! This last week (my first week of summer break, yay!) has been all about digging up and preparing the soil, sowing the seeds and in general making a good, practical and fertile vegetable patch for our family. So far we have put down seeds for spinach, different salad types, peas, carrots, cucumbers, leeks, turnips, courgettes, different herbs and beautiful flowers. Fingers crossed it will turn out better than last year, which was a disaster because the soil in that garden wasn't soil, but sand. I really don't want to talk about it, haha (still sore).
I'm lucky enough to have little helpers too, so how could it go wrong?
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Ps: If you see here and here, you'll see that we have happy experiences with veg farming, too! :)

Scenes of summer.