professionally chasing golden hour since 2008.
dulce lumen (pronounced “duhl-say lou-men”) is inspired by the latin words for “sweet light.”
hi, i’m melody.
i love creating art and beauty for the sake of art and beauty. i’ve been shooting video since the early 2000s when I first borrowed my parents’ camcorder to direct my brothers and their friends in home videos.
launching my own creative brand has been a lifelong goal. the push i needed came in 2020 when the world shut down (as it did for many people). dulce lumen was born in may of 2021 when i quit my 9-5 and began working full-time as a filmmaker and photographer.
my husband and i are both summer camp people. i met luke in 2015 at shocco springs in central alabama and we were married there by the lake three years later. In august of 2021, we packed up our whole world and moved to forsyth, georgia, where my husband began serving in his dream position as the director of camp kaleo. In september of 2022 our little charley was born. and our aussie mutt named mayer is living her best life as camp dog.
slow living is where it’s at (although life with a toddler can get kind of bananas). nature and sunsets are life-givers to me; you’ll see threads of botanicals and golden light throughout my work. you can often find me playing with my son charley or riding our bike through the woods, doing small home renovation projects to our cabin, helping out a lot at camp kaleo (especially in the summer!), and finding some time to have coffee on the porch and listen to the wind chimes. i could eat mexican food every day and my husband swears queso has become part of my dna.
it’s not perfect around here. it’s gritty. you probably wouldn’t have to look hard to find imperfections. may we find honest humanity refreshing in one another. i’m dedicated to building dulce lumen in a sustainable, life-giving way for myself and my family. i deeply appreciate you being here and it’s really cool to have you around.
xoxo melody
some professional and life-history bits:
self-taught photographer. first professional photography gig in 2008.
filmmaker for over 8 years. university degree in “digital cinema and film” from the university of south alabama in 2015. some master’s degree completed.
almost-degree in worship leadership from the university of mobile.
the name dulce lumen is an homage to golden hour and is latin for “sweet light.” in another life my freelance moniker was “sweet light imaging.”
from 2017-2021 i worked on staff at the church at brook hills as media coordinator, producing all in-house photography and filmmaking content creation, as well as managing live-stream production.