"I love everyone I photograph."  A slight smile curls into a grin that follows Ed McDonald eagerly across the studio to a collection of images hung in scrapbook fashion from ceiling to floor.

"Ah, your family," I smirk, noticing the diversity of portraits, lifestyle shots and captured moments that could fill many lifetimes. "You must be proud." I nod to the countless rows of laughing children and try to guess which ones are actually his.

"I have to love them," he explains. "I don't just photograph people - I photograph people feeling things, doing things, being things. If they're not family to begin with, they certainly become that by the end."

High up on the wall is a series of an elderly woman doing what looks like a form of yoga. Her smile softens from one pose to the next, until in the last frame she peers not at the camera but into it, her expression exposing a deep connection-maybe a kind of love.

"Yeah, she was something special," Ed recalls. "Everything started out happy and light, but her heart wasn't in it. We kept shooting and shooting, and then all of a sudden she was there. I mean really in the moment. The camera seemed to disappear, and we were just two people relating, getting to know one another."

"And then there was this couple from Kentucky. They wanted their dogs here to help 'liven things up'. I couldn't believe it - two retrievers running and barking. We all spent the afternoon laughing and learning tricks!"