We’re Justin and Cheri, the duo behind B&L Photography. The initials come from Beren and Lúthien, characters created by J.R.R. Tolkien. His stories have long inspired us, and their names felt fitting for the studio we created together.
For us, photography begins with recognition—the instant when light, weather, wildlife, or some small detail changes a scene and makes us stop. Sometimes that moment is dramatic. More often, it is quiet and easy to miss.
Justin primarily photographs landscapes and wildlife, while Cheri focuses on macro photography and brings a critical eye to the selection and refinement of our work. We approach each image as a collaboration, even when only one of us was behind the camera.
Outside of photography, Justin teaches at a college, and Cheri manages a hospital’s biomedical equipment department. Much of our time away from work is spent hiking and camping with our dog, Viggo. Those trips give us time to slow down, pay attention, and watch how a place changes with light, weather, and movement.
Editing is part of that process. The goal is not to invent a scene that was never there, but to bring forward what caught our attention in the first place: the shape of the light, the atmosphere of the landscape, or the presence of an animal within it.
We want our work to do more than show what a place looked like. We want it to hold a moment, suggest a story, and give the viewer a reason to pause.
