Lifestyle

Kristi Ronning, Beautifully Portraying ‘Love, Knows No Bounds’

Published

3 years ago

December 1, 2022

If your concept of eloping includes sneaking away at night, or heading to your dream place, think again. Small, highly mobile weddings have grown by leaps and bounds over the past five years. Fueled by mind-blowing posts on Pinterest, Instagram, and beyond, a growing number of young couples are trading in churches and banquet halls.

With the pandemic disrupting thousands of weddings, the shift to small elopements is growing faster. An elopement containing just the couple and a few guests is comparatively safer and a far less stressful way for marriage than calling relatives, friends and many other guests.

In order to provide you with ethereal and magical photography for your wedding, Kristi Ronning founded Opal and Ox. Ronning is an American Elopement photographer, recognized for her mountain-top portraits. In addition, she features breathtaking landscapes with an aesthetic sense.

Born on July 30, 1991, and raised in Pine Island, Minnesota, Ronning is the youngest of her siblings. She was born to Kathy Shafer and Jeff Ronning. From a very young age, she loved capturing photographs of her surroundings. As a kid, she loved dancing and taking theater classes. When Ronning entered second grade, her mother was thoughtful enough to gift her a disposable camera, which quickly turned into a digital one. From that point onwards, she has never put her camera down. Her passion drove her to become a professional photographer at the age of nineteen.

After getting married to her husband, Ralphie, the two opened a photography and videography service-providing company named Opal and Ox. The couple has been quite successful in covering weddings worldwide since 2012.

She has kept Opal & Ox services very admirable. According to her, life is all about exploring new adventures, this is what she, along with her husband, has been doing, and the reason for creating Opal & Ox is to lend their support to those who want to discover their love in an aesthetic style. Furthermore, the couple strongly believes that photography and videography flow together perfectly. This is why Ronning has been capturing emotions, energy, joys, and memories through the lens of her camera.

She firmly thinks that whether it’s weddings and elopements, family photo sessions, senior portraits, or newborn photos, she knows how to capture the moments. Opal & Ox has been telling stories together through film and photos since almost 15 years. The journey has been quite memorable and displays Ronning’s love for photography in a nutshell.

In her early years of photography, she covered conventional weddings. Upon moving to Montana, she began pioneering the mountain-top elopement wedding style that has been made famous by social media platforms.

Ronning loves to incorporate fun fashion pieces into natural landscapes. Being completely self-taught, she quickly became one of the most prominent elopement photographers in the world. Now, people all across the world admire her work. However, she is best known for climbing mountain peaks with couples and documenting their marriage at an elevation of over 10,000 feet. Currently living in Montana, she shoots on a Hasselblad 907x medium format digital camera.

In 2020, Ronning was featured on the cover of Montana bride magazine, volumes 18 & 19, for capturing an epic three days shoot in the mountains. The magazine did a 9-page spread about the 3-day overnight hike in the mountains outside Yellowstone National Park.

Ronning’s future endeavors include launching her first photography book and filming a documentary following her life and career in the mountains. Her determination made her capable enough that in 2022, she was featured in Rocky Mountain Bride magazine. Being a woman, she has never given up on her dreams. Her continuous efforts and life-long achievements can be a true inspiration for all young female photographers out there.

Lifestyle

Fozia Rashid’s Vision for a Future Where Every Woman Is Heard and Respected

Published

8 hours ago

May 18, 2026

Michelle Langton

Progress often starts with someone who refuses to accept silence as the only option. Many women experience unfair treatment at work, yet feel they have nowhere safe to turn. That gap, the distance between speaking up and being supported, is where real change is still needed, and it remains one of the biggest barriers to true equality today.

Fozia Rashid knows this firsthand. After raising concerns about serious misconduct in her own workplace and losing her job as a result, she saw how isolating it can be for women who try to do the right thing. That experience pushed her to create She Speaks Out, a platform designed to give women clarity, tools, and a voice during some of the most challenging moments in their careers.

From the beginning, her aim was not to build another information site. She wanted a space where women could feel understood, where complicated processes were broken down into simple steps, and where no one felt that reporting misconduct meant stepping into a dark tunnel alone. Her HR training helped shape this approach, turning what is often overwhelming into something practical, direct, and genuinely supportive, especially for women who feel lost navigating workplace policies.

Her long-term vision stretches far beyond offering resources. Fozia wants She Speaks Out to help shift the culture around how women are treated at work. She believes that when women share their real experiences, discrimination, dismissal of their concerns, or subtle daily biases, it exposes patterns that organisations can no longer ignore. This focus on storytelling is not about sympathy; it is about awareness. Stories make the invisible visible, and visibility forces change in a way that statistics alone rarely can.

A key part of her mission is amplifying those voices so they reach people who can influence policy and workplace culture. She hopes the platform will push employers to rethink how they respond to reports, how they support employees, and how they build environments where women don’t fear retaliation for raising concerns. She wants leaders to understand that equality is not a slogan, it is a responsibility that requires honest action and genuine accountability.

Fozia also envisions She Speaks Out playing a role in larger societal change. She wants the platform to encourage companies to review their internal practices, improve reporting structures, and train managers to recognise and address problems rather than avoid them. She hopes the platform will support the push for stronger workplace protections and help challenge outdated beliefs about women’s roles, abilities, and credibility. The goal is simple: fair treatment should not depend on who you are, but on the basic respect every employee deserves.

As the platform grows, she aims to build a strong community where women can connect, support one another, and encourage those who feel unsure or unheard. A community where experiences are shared openly, not whispered privately. She believes that building solidarity among women is one of the most powerful steps toward lasting equality. When one woman speaks up, it can be dismissed. When many do, it becomes a movement that organisations cannot afford to overlook.

For Fozia, the future is not just about better policies or clearer reporting tools, though those matter. It’s about creating workplaces where women don’t have to prepare themselves for resistance every time they raise a concern. A future where safety and respect are not exceptional, but expected.

And through She Speaks Out, she is steadily pushing that future forward, giving women what she once needed most: a place to be heard, believed, and supported without hesitation, and a reminder that they never have to face these challenges alone.