April: Portrait

It's been a treat for me that my last two sessions were with strong, beautiful, and all- around fabulous women! It's even more fun when you meet a client and realize she is someone you'd want to be friends with anyway. From the first moment we met over coffee, April charmed me with her sweet, bubbly personality and I especially love the photos from the session where she is laughing - you can't see, but behind the camera, I'm laughing too.

We met at the beautiful University of Southern California campus and I think this session captures April's vivacious and fun spirit.

April may not be a professional model, but she definitely knows how to work it.

Besides being just naturally stunning, she is also a professional make up artist and did her own make up for this session. Ladies, if you are booking a session, you should consider having a pro do your make up - it really makes a difference!

Rose: Portrait

When I was in first grade, I had a friend down the street who had a "dress up" box - all kinds of discarded clothes from her mom mixed with Halloween clothes. I was totally jealous of her! She would let me come over and we would take turns smearing on Hello Kitty lipgloss and prancing around in a pair of old bridesmaid satin heels in front of a full-length mirror. It was so much fun.

This photo shoot was very remniscient of my dress up box days. When Rose and I talked about the shoot, we both excitedly bonded over how we were inspired by fashion and advertising. She in particular had seen some lovely simple photos from Smartwater ads featuring Jennifer Aniston, which we used as inspiration for some black and white portraits. When she arrived, she was toting about a dozen outfit choices with just as many accessories and shoes, and it was the dress up box all over again. She dumped the bags out on the table and we both giggled and began pulling different items out.

My clients are amazing! Rose gave me complete creative freedom and was kind enough to let me go out on a limb by trying out some lighting equipment I'd never worked with before. We also got to shoot in a room in the uber-cool Viceroy Santa Monica. It was basically a dream shoot with no limits and the results are much more edgy and fashion-forward than my usual images.

Rose, I had a wonderful time playing "dress up" with you and I absolutely love the images we created together. Thank you for giving me the chance to experiment and for the wonderful tapas and sangria!