Looking for Love
February is often called the month of love, most visibly celebrated on Valentine’s Day. Hearts, cards, flowers, grand gestures, and chocolate (my fav!). But this year, love feels like something much bigger than one day or one version of itself.
You’ve seen my posts and previous blog entries talking about love. I ended 2025 with a blog titled The Gift of Looking Back, and that post ended with a single word — love. (If you haven’t yet, it’s worth a read.) Love is the core of Kristy Marie Photography, and right now, that feels more important than ever.
When I pick up my camera, I am always looking for love.
Love in all shapes and sizes, in all forms, in every season, at every session.
Sometimes it’s obvious — couples hugging, arms wrapped tightly around each other. Other times it’s quieter, like coffee being made for you before you get out of bed, or a note tucked into your lunch box. It lives in the corners of someone’s eyes when they look at the person that means the most to them, or when they hear the words I love you whispered to them.
It shows up in the way a child cups their mama’s cheek or wraps their hands around her fingers. In the way kids run full speed and pile onto dad. And it is woven into the fabric that binds our most cherished friendships through time.
Love is an energy, and if you let a moment unfold exactly as it’s meant to — authentically and undisturbed — you will find it. I promise.
Lately, love feels a little less obvious and a little bit easier to overlook.
Things have felt heavy — maybe you’ve felt it too. Almost fractured.
Like empathy has become scarce and love has grown risky to speak out loud.
I think these are the moments when connection becomes the most important, when love becomes grounding — especially when it’s authentic and offered freely, not for attention, clicks, or likes.
Love doesn’t always look like a declaration. Sometimes it’s small and ordinary. Buying the person behind you a coffee. Letting someone go ahead of you in line. Letting someone pass you on the highway without raising a middle finger. Smiling and saying thank you to the person who held the door — or being the person who held it. Telling your waitress you like her nail polish. Thanking your postal worker. Wishing the grocery checkout person a wonderful day and meaning it.
Small things stack up.
They get paid forward.
They matter.
People will remember how you made them feel. That isn’t debatable — it’s life.
I recently heard someone talk about manifestation in a way that stuck with me. He said that if you go to bed every night with a reminder under your pillow to look for yellow butterflies, your subconscious will register it. If you leave a note beside your coffee maker each morning reminding you to look for them, you will start to see yellow butterflies everywhere.
It’s winter in Maine, so it’s unlikely one will land on your nose today. But you might notice one on someone’s sweater. In a photograph on a restaurant wall. In a magazine. In your child’s coloring book.
What we choose to look for, we begin to see everywhere.
So look for the yellow butterflies. And look for the love.
Or perhaps this year, we can do more than look…
Because looking for love is one thing.
Being open to seeing it — that’s everything.
With love,
Kristy