i’m halie jo

I’ve always been more interested in how things are made than simply admiring the finished result.

I want to know who built the table, how the old house got its crooked windows, what plant is growing along the edge of the trail, and what tiny moment made someone smile just before a photograph was taken.

I am a photographer, herbalist, storyteller, and lifelong collector of curiosities. For over a decade, I’ve used photography to preserve the fleeting things that are easy to miss — the quiet glances, the wild laughter, the hands reaching for each other — the little pieces of a day that become memories.

But my curiosity has never stayed in one place for long and has led me down many side quests & other forms of creation.

A few years ago, my husband and I converted an old school bus into a tiny home and I spent several years wandering across the United States with a constant willingness to figure things out along the way.

Now, we’re building a small cabin by hand in the mountains of Western North Carolina. It is teaching us hundreds of building skills, patience, problem-solving, and the strange reality that sometimes a single window decision can become a three-hour frustrating conversation, which therefore teaches us more about communication.

When I’m not photographing people or covered in sawdust, you’ll likely find me in the woods, wandering through antique stores, creating an herbal concoction, or following a question much further than I intended.

This space is a home for all of those threads — the building projects, the photographs of how I see the world, the plants, the stories, and the little but meaningful learnings collected along the way.

I no longer think of these things as separate. They’re all different ways of paying attention & spending time that weave together a magical life worth sharing.

Thank you for being here.