Long Beach Senior Portraits
Lets applaud all the high school and college seniors who finished out their academic journeys at home, on zoom, in the midst of a global pandemic! Most high school seniors graduating this year missed their homecoming and winter formals, sporting events, spring break festivities, camaraderie with friends, and extracurricular activities they previously engaged in and loved.
These two amazing young ladies decided to make the best of their situation, stayed positive, and completed all the requirements to graduate and gain admission into the colleges of their choice! To celebrate, they got to do a senior photo session! (A BIG thank you for choosing me to be your photographer!!) We had a blast roaming around El Dorado Regional Park!
Wishing them all the best in the next exciting chapter of their lives!! xoxo
Old Ranch Country Club Family Session
I love this family! This is our third family session together and each one has been a unique and wonderful experience. We shot this latest session at the Old Ranch Country Club. You may notice that mom is pregnant in these photos and just gave birth to their second child, a baby boy, earlier this month! Congratulations to the Soko family! I hope you enjoy my favorite images from this session! xoxo
Los Angeles Branding Session
Talk about passion for life! Natalie Holbrook (Wellness) is on a mission to make the world a better place through educating us on how to better care of our bodies, especially through gut health. She writes and speaks about holistic nutrition, how to boost your energy levels, weight stability, creating a positive mindset, and manifesting the body and life you truly wish to create! You can connect with her through Facebook here and her website coming soon! We had so much fun creating these images together. It was an EPIC full-day shoot that took us all over L.A. and ended with a delicious dinner at Botanica. Their food was as incredible as our day! Here’s to #EatingBeautifully! xoxo
Dessert should always come first!
Walker Canyon Portraits
Izzy is a dear friend, and for an afternoon, she was my model and partner in adventure and we set out to see the incredible Super Bloom of 2019! It was not until after our trip that I read that disturbing the flora can disrupt the delicate poppy ecosystem and even prevent the super bloom from returning. Lesson learned: stay on the path. Avoid the urge to, as John McCrae once wrote: “In fields the poppies blow, between the crosses row by row. Short days we lived, felt dawn, saw sunsets glow; loved and were loved, and now we lie in….fields…..” (An excerpt from the poem Flanders Fields.)
West L.A. Branding Session
Combine good food and photography and I’m in heaven! I had a blast working with Natalie Holbrook, creating content for her forthcoming website! She is an Institute of Integrative Nutrition (IIN) certified Health Coach and has trained at the acclaimed PLANTLAB Culinary. She teaches people how to heal their gut and create more radiant and active lives. You can find out more about her services here.
Cerritos Portrait Session &Fine Art Editing
Ask any photographer and they will likely say that the most time-consuming part of photography is the editing process. Of course there are gorgeous presets that offer some one-click fixes, however, presets only make general adjustments to things like tone, contrast, and saturation. I always find that there are certain adjustments I want to make that require intentional and specific choices, ones that a computer would never be able to intuit on its own. At least not yet. 😉
So let me take you through my process; one that I call fine-art editing. It is part of what you invest in when you hire me you create your portraits. And I feel it makes a world of difference.
In this image you will see that Aly’s face is in shadow. I want her face to be there area of focus. In order for that to happen it needs to be brighter. First I selected her face, arm, and hands and brought up the level of “light” using a curves layer. Next I smoothed out skin tones and added a touch of color to her lips. I noticed that there were a few bright highlights on her hair which I found a little distracting so I darkened them. My eye kept getting caught on the space between the two metallic phone booths so I pulled a different view of a single booth from another image and “masked” it in. (This all happened in Photoshop CC). I removed the marks/spots from the metallic booth and took out that tiny speck to the left of the prism reflection (the rainbow curve on the left side of the image). I smoothed out her dress. Finally, I brought the saturation up just a bit on the reds, decreased the yellows, and brought up the overall brightness of the image.
And voila!
In this next image you can see that Aly’s face and hands are a bit overexposed. The first adjustment I usually make to an image is in relationship to exposure. I do this by adding a “curves” layer which adjusts the brightness of the area you select. When I felt I had an even skin tone, I moved on to smoothing the skin. I usually take several versions of the same image in case eyes are closed or squinting– that way I have options to work with. Aly’s left eye was out of focus in the primary image I was working with so I brought in a left eye from another image that was in focus. (Sounds kinda funny doesn’t it?) During the session I had adjusted Aly’s hair giving it a bit more volume in one image in this series. I brought her hair into the primary image that had the expression I liked best. I added eyeliner. Finally, I removed background distractions including really bright highlights, dimming them down, and filling in the top left corner with flowers.
Here is the final edit:
This last image was a slightly more complex process because I used three images to create the final edit. In this first image I liked the way Aly’s right arm was covered by the curtain. I also liked that I could see more of her dress at the bottom of the frame and more of the curtain to her left because I was standing further away from her for this shot. I used this image as my base. (You will notice the big yellow circles in the center– I had been experimenting with twinkle lights and two of them are very prominent here.)
I pulled Aly’s face and dress from this image as Aly’s face was mostly free from harsh highlights which were in abundance because she was standing right next to french doors.
Sometimes I reframe an image if I feel the subject is too far to one side and I feel centering the subject would look best. I centered Aly by creating parts of the curtain that weren’t there to begin with. I used the cloning tool to do this after making a copy of the image and shrinking the size of the top image so Aly had more space surrounding her. Imagine two identical images stacked on top of each other and then shrinking the upper image down so you can see the borders of the image underneath it. Aly now appeared to be centered and smaller within the frame. I merged the two images together, created extra curtains to cover up the border of the bottom image and then went to work evening skin tone, smoothing skin, removing harsh highlights on her dress, and giving her a touch of lip color and eyeliner. I then brightened selective areas of the image…. Light, airy flow!
I hope you enjoyed learning a bit about my editing process and that it helps to give you added understanding to the value of the work photographers do after they’ve taken your photos! xoxo
Marina Del Rey Web Content Portraits
This Venice + Marina del Rey portrait session with yacht chef Renee Lo Iacono, founder of Rare BLEU, was delicious! She creates raw/vegan/vegetarian wellness-centered dishes that tantalize the senses and infuse your soul with energy. She blogs and consults on how to be the healthiest version of yourself; and who couldn’t use a little more radiant health in their lives? She believes that the cure for much of what physically ails us can be found in our food. I agree full-heartedly!
She treats life like an adventure and deeply appreciates the beauty that she sees all around her…because she makes the effort to look for it. She has a wonderful attitude towards life and people. You can connect with Renee and learn more about her and her services here. Please enjoy some of our favorite images from this session!
Seal Beach boho Bridal Session
Lace, light, and a whole lotta love went into this boho bridal styled shoot in Seal Beach. A big shout out to Cassandra Richardson who modeled and helped style this session! Her professionalism and passion for her art is exciting! Props to my girl Melisa Saraceni bringin it home with the florals! As always she went with her unique and exotic taste in greenery and blooms! (Yes there were carnivorous plants in that bouquet!) Thank you to my photo assistant Kim Orthel for hand-making the earrings and necklace and Boots Guzman for working her hair magic! It was a pleasure ladies!
If you have a whimsical, bohemian styled session in mind and would like to collaborate with me to bring it to life, click the contact button above and message or call! Lets make it happen! xoxo
Long Beach Plant and People Portraits
After a Naples family session, I had arranged to pop over to Lisa’s house, from Succulents for the Soul Instagram fame, where we met for the first time! I photographed her amazing yard and met her adorable grandson named Dean. Lisa has poured hours into landscaping her beautiful front and back yards! She has created an oasis to surround her home. <3
San Francisco
San Francisco is, by far, my favorite city to visit. Talk about zany, eccentric, colorful, and fun! A friend and I drove up there earlier this month, (March 2014), and it was great to be back exploring the uniqueness of the neighborhoods, parks and local markets, as well as climbing the mountainous thoroughfares. Highlights from the trip include crossing the Golden Gate Bridge by foot, savoring salsiccia pizza and ricotta cannoli amazingness at Pizzeria Delfina, and cruising down Haight Street for a little shopping. Here are my favorite images from our meanderings. Enjoy!
Rancho Los Cerritos Family Session
This first image melts my heart! Laura, John, and Harrison, I love you!!! Thank you for hiring me to do your family pictures!!! It was an absolute BLAST working with you and I look forward to our next shoot together! Enjoy these beautiful images and thank you for making them possible!
Lakewood Family Session with The Bons
The West San Gabriel River Parkway Nature Trail is a beautiful suburban gem, tucked away beside a myriad of parks in the city of Lakewood, a neighboring city to the Bo family. The Bons are so art-full! Musically talented, theatrically inclined, on screen, on stage, and behind the scenes, they could put on a variety show that would be entertaining to all. It’s an honor to know them and to have been hired to photograph them. Check out the drum-line at the end! 🙂
