A woman with curly hair in a bun, wearing sunglasses, a black t-shirt, black shorts, and hiking shoes, is smiling and holding her hair back with one hand while hiking on rocky terrain with green bushes and trees, with mountain ranges and a partly cloudy sky in the background. A small brown dog is walking nearby on the trail.

ABOUT KIMBERLY KAUFMAN

I’ve always been drawn to moments that disappear before we’ve fully witnessed them.

The shift in someone’s expression. Wind moving through a landscape. Hands at work. The energy between two people when they’ve forgotten anyone else is there.

Photography gives me a way to hold onto some of that.

I’m Kimberly, the photographer + creator behind Bracken. Based in Vermont, I photograph people, places, lifestyle brands, and the stories that unfold between them throughout New England and beyond.

My work isn’t about perfection or recreating an obvious moment. I’m interested in what’s actually there: movement, connection, environment, and the fleeting energy of an instant that might otherwise exist only as a feeling.

Mountain landscape with multiple layers of distant mountain ranges under cloudy sky, foreground filled with dense evergreen trees
Close-up of yellow and pink flowers on a dark background with blurred foliage

A life behind the image

Photography has been part of my creative work for much of my career.

Before Bracken, I spent years working with brands as an art director, designer, and photographer, creating everything from lifestyle and product photography to campaigns and visual identities.

That experience taught me to think beyond a single photograph. I pay attention to environment, composition, story, and how individual images work together to create something larger.

Bracken grew from a desire to bring that experience together with the photography I’m most drawn to: people, wild places, meaningful work, and moments that feel alive.

Person carving a wooden object on a lathe outdoors with greenery in the background.
Black-and-white photo of an old, dilapidated industrial building surrounded by trees. The building has rusted metal siding and a rooftop balcony with a guardrail, with graffiti visible on the walls.

Outside the frame

When I’m not photographing, I’m usually making something, wandering somewhere, or learning how something works.

I’m drawn to mountains, rock climbing, traditional crafts, working with my hands, herbalism, plants, food cooked over fire, deep conversations, and places that make you lose track of time.

Most of it eventually finds its way back into the photographs.

A person's hand holding pine branches, with a tattoo of leaves on the arm and a diamond ring on the finger.

The Bracken philosophy

Moments happen and then they’re gone.

I photograph the in-between: the wild, the fleeting, the energy that existed in an instant, so something of it can be witnessed again.

LET’S MAKE SOMETHING »

Elopements, portraits, brand work, strange ideas, and everything in between.