“In my introversion I realize that a 12 year old girl has completely turned everything upside down for me. My business plans, my life plans, even my relationships have changed. It’s been a ripple effect from my professional life into the deepest parts of my soul.”

For those of you who do not know, I photographed Cheyenne and her family on Father’s Day of this year at a local children’s hospital. She had been fighting stage 4 cancer that was in her brain and in her meninges and had been in the hospital for over 60 days. Today at 2:32 am, Cheyenne’s pain and suffering finally reached it’s end as she went on to be with the lord. Cheyenne was 12 years old.

This print line was scheduled to be launched today and it’s purpose was to offer support to Cheyenne and her family during the difficult times they had been facing. Now that Cheyenne has passed on, the print line is a dedication to her, in the most loving memory of a girl who’s life affected my own and those of countless others. 100% of all proceeds will still go directly to Cheyenne’s family during this painful and difficult time in their lives. Thank you to all who supported Cheyenne during her fight with cancer, and thank you to all who support her family now that her fight has reached it’s end.

Please click on the thumbnails to enlarge them.

The Background

The Images

To purchase prints please click this link: Print Purchasing.

Scroll down for Questions & Answers, Satisfaction Guarantee, & Special Thanks.

The Questions & The Answers

The Guarantee

The Thank You

If you have any questions or concerns please do not hesitate in e-mailing me: rebekahtillotson@gmail.com

Thank you again for taking the time to read Cheyenne’s story. God Bless.

Rebekah Elena

“I was in a state of witless shock, as though flames had suddenly enwrapped and paralyzed me so that for a moment I had no mind,

no memory.”

If your work is lacking the fire, lacking the luster that it once held, look back to your favorite images. What is it about them that you love so?

For me, I had to realize that I was thinking far too much. Caught up in F stops, lens sharpness, and a bunch of nonsense. Not to say that none of that is important, but none of it will ever be worth anything if the passion is gone. Today I went back to the basics, rediscovering what made the images I loved so much, images I had made when I had first purchased my 180mm lens and the months that closely followed. All of them had one thing in common: they were made when I knew relatively little of macro photography but knew much of expression (and manual shooting). In the past couple of months I’d been focusing on technical far too much and not balancing it with expression. Today, I shot everything as I had back then, between f3.5 and f4.0 without a care in the world.

Behind four walls, one feels safe. But outside of them, one feels very much alive.

Blogging has been difficult. I’ve sat here so many times this week trying to formulate some sort of half-hearted delusion of eloquence. Ever since Father’s Day it seems that any entry I put in The Love Story is dim, meaningless and void of connection. I’ve been through many things in my seventeen years of life, but all of them seemed dwarfed in comparison to the battle that’s been going on within myself. In my introversion I realize that a 12 year old girl has completely turned everything upside down for me. My business plans, my life plans, even my relationships have changed. It’s been a ripple effect from my professional life into the deepest parts of my soul.

“The pressure in her brain is increasing.” her father said to me this evening, “Its causing her more pain and will eventually stop her heart without intervention from God.”

I’ve been thinking much of miracles these passing days. My mind wanders, even when I’m doing menial tasks throughout the day. I become more and more aware of the naive nature that embodies the human race, of the lack  or illusion of comprehension that can either drive one to humility or a state of permanent doubt and unbelief. With every question I ask myself, I find dozens more that need to to be answered, though I find that no answer exists…only vague solutions or opinions. I digress now on all my thoughts, for were I to write them all here I would keep myself up late into the night.

Without Cheyenne, without a 12 year old girl with stage 4 cancer, where would I be? And why, oh why, did it take her to change me, to open my eyes more to the world. You can’t thank someone for something like that. You can’t sit down beside them and say “Your pain has brought me a revelation.” Instead you sit at your computer at 11:22 on a Tuesday night feeling selfish for feeling grateful for a start, for a new direction. But then you think to yourself…

“how selfish would it be if I did absolutely nothing?”

Whatever you do…just do something.