So… how’s your June been so far…? And your 2025? I assume that maybe it hasn’t been the easiest go over the past 5 months for you. My 2025 have been a bit rough at times honestly, but also healing at some points. It’s interesting what difficult times can create in us and through us.
Let’s focus on Saturday this past week or what was Flag Day, No Kings Day Protest June 2025, & apparently Trump’s birthday… or his failed/ lowly attended military parade thingy. In the same time zone as that sad parade, we had a 5,000 to 10,000 person protest here in one of the top few biggest cities in Indiana- a very high percentage of the 100k population. For those unaware, anything over about 2.5% to 3% of a population at a protest is historically of significant note. There were countless protests across “Republican” Indiana- across both Republican & Democratic cities in the entire United States. This far blew the 1st local protest of the year- the well-attended 2,000+ person protest by one of the 5 universities here- out of the water with attendees across all walks of life, education levels, ethnic backgrounds, and more. Across the nation there- at my last view- appeared to be around 13 MILLION attendees of protests across both major cities and small towns in both Democrat and Republican cities-!
This also coincided with protests for the USA and Democracy at large across the ENTIRE WORLD- including our allies in Europe and elsewhere worldwide-! As an independent professional photographer & reporter I should not admit this, but I again did tear up at many, many points while photographing. I’m not embarrassed by this objective fact, rather instead of being worried about potentially being bullied over it I’d like to use this as a moment to point out that empathy, imperfect/ complicated emotions, and admitting hope/ faith/ appreciation are actually signs of strength rather than weakness. These are also emotions I and others have had while photographing beautiful and complicated moments during high end weddings and events (wherein recently deceased loved ones are honoured, where love is commited to a spouse or child, or where someone of great determination is celebrated) and also other extreme and non-extreme moments in existence (in the real, tangible world, but also online).
Onto the images-! (*More writing at the bottom if you’re more of a human-written/ not AI written words vs images person #FuckYourAIArt). All writing and created images by Jennifer Johns.
These images and this story again are solely that of Jennifer Johns. All image rights and opinions stated are her property. The writing and imagery may be added to 2 other writing platforms in coming weeks/ months, but the person remains relatively the same with consistency that you’ve witnessed over the past nearly decade of blogs and 25 years of online writing from her- largely across 5 main platforms/ website hosts. If you made it this far (didn’t break up imagery with writing as I normally would) there were about 150 protest images. Though not as diverse as a full 7 to 11 hour wedding day’s photography blog coverage by me, it’s still in line with the 150- 350 professional wedding & family portraiture photography imagery I was trying to get up online weekly for years. Regardless of the content, I do still hope that my imagery and writing has ever had or continues to have some sort of (*hopefully positive or reflective) impact on your day or life. If not, thanks for hate reading/ looking-! The hatred of women has escalated substantially over the past 3 years of abortion bans, so we can thank the patriarchy and weak politicians for the passing of those laws/ the real-life, objective effects they’ve had on women.
You may have noticed a fluctuation between 25 blog posts in 2023 to only 4 in 2024. That change in blog consistency was due to a change in business in 2025 this year (of which we’re in month 6) and personal changes behind the scenes. More details on that to come, but for now suffice to say that things are better in many ways on those two fronts! To hope for better days worldwide, nationally, and for everyone personally-!