Anthropologie Chevy Chase - Washington, D.C. trip!

A few days ago, I returned from a weeklong trip to D.C. for a friend's wedding. My parents and I had some time to be tourists before the wedding festivities, so I took advantage of the new scenery and booked a photoshoot with a local Anthropologie! They brought the clothes & the models, and suggested this fantastic spot in Georgetown along the canal, and it was a great time. Here's to my first non-California, formal photoshoot! Be sure to check out Anthropologie Chevy Chase on their Instagram. AnthroChevyChase-012AnthroChevyChase-00900DIP2AnthroChevyChase-030AnthroChevyChase-03300DIP3AnthroChevyChase-058AnthroChevyChase-060AnthroChevyChase-07300DIP4AnthroChevyChase-079AnthroChevyChase-081AnthroChevyChase-088AnthroChevyChase-084AnthroChevyChase-093AnthroChevyChase-104AnthroChevyChase-125AnthroChevyChase-114AnthroChevyChase-12800DIP5AnthroChevyChase-137AnthroChevyChase-14400DIP7AnthroChevyChase-146AnthroChevyChase-151AnthroChevyChase-164AnthroChevyChase-167AnthroChevyChase-177AnthroChevyChase-185AnthroChevyChase-188AnthroChevyChase-204AnthroChevyChase-22600DIP8AnthroChevyChase-230AnthroChevyChase-24200DIP9AnthroChevyChase-234AnthroChevyChase-237AnthroChevyChase-239AnthroChevyChase-244AnthroChevyChase-246AnthroChevyChase-249AnthroChevyChase-259AnthroChevyChase-265AnthroChevyChase-267AnthroChevyChase-271AnthroChevyChase-278AnthroChevyChase-272AnthroChevyChase-28300DIP10AnthroChevyChase-293AnthroChevyChase-295AnthroChevyChase-305AnthroChevyChase-301

FlyAway BlueJay Branding Shoot

Wilder Ranch Photoshoot | Bay Area Commercial Photographer

This shoot with Holly of FlyAway BlueJay was a lot of fun! She stocks a bunch of beautiful products, so featuring them against a coastal backdrop was a flawless combination. And of course, we had our lovely model, Sarah Swangler-Arimura, who helped make the products come to life. I'd love to do more of these branding shoots, so if you're a small business in need of some high-quality imagery for your website and social media, contact me!

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5 of a Kind | ModCloth Shoot

I'm so happy to finally be sharing this shoot. The idea has been in the works since October 2015, and it took me nearly seven months to a) find 5 girls with dark hair & bangs, b) find a company to sponsor the identical outfits (thank you, Modcloth!), and c) pick a date that worked for everyone. I even had the privilege of working with Elise Muetterties of Near & Dear Style, who flew down from Seattle to style the shoot! I can't believe everything came together as nicely as it did. I wanted to portray the idea of being identical and in symmetry with one another. I find repeated shapes along minimal horizons to be so beautiful! So here it is: 5 of a kind.

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Bridget | Sunrise Lupine Session

Bridget and I went to high school together, and I was so excited when she contacted me to take her college senior portraits. When I asked if she'd be willing to meet me at 6:45am for a sunrise session, she said "yes" without hesitation and drove from San Jose to Dublin (45 minutes!) all ready to shoot! I think it was worth it - we got some stunning shots in the lupines!

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Flower Beard! Editing an iPhone photo in Lightroom | Video Tutorial

Over the weekend, I went home to my parents' house and saw that this bush - I'm not sure what it's called - was just starting to bloom. It was begging me to take photos with it somehow, but I hadn't even brought my camera.flower beard

Luckily we all have high-quality photo-taking machines in our pockets these days, so I pulled out my iPhone and asked Padraic if he'd mind getting in the bush for some "flower beard" photos. Because he is as nice as he is, he agreed without hesitation. I was super happy with the results!

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However, since I also hadn't brought my laptop along to edit with, I was limited to editing on my phone with the VSCO Cam app. Because there were some more complex details I wanted to alter, I gave up on that and waited to pull the photos into Lightroom when I got home. Here is a brief editing tutorial/behind-the-scenes video! Hope you enjoy it!

Yosemite & Hetch Hetchy

This past weekend my family and I took a trip to Yosemite, where there was much less snow than we were expecting. We had perfect weather on Saturday and did about 6 miles of hiking, and then it was raining all day on Sunday, which is when we went to Hetch Hetchy and got soaked. I love shooting in dreary weather, and I think seeing wisps of fog lingering in the crevices of canyon walls is one of the most beautiful sights. YosemiteSpring-001YosemiteSpring-028YosemiteSpring-039YosemiteSpring-040YosemiteSpring-043YosemiteSpring-047YosemiteSpring-050YosemiteSpring-059YosemiteSpring-063

An Interview with Ariella

Today we hear from Ariella Yendler – cook, dancer, and architect extraordinaire. I could proceed with a generic introduction, but I'd like to tell you that this is the girl whom I texted at 4:30 on a cold, rainy afternoon asking if she'd run into the ocean in a dress at 7:00pm "for art" and she agreed without (audible) hesitation. She later told me she's not even very good at swimming.

Now that you have a sense of her devotion as a friend (or as she would phrase it, "Nope, just an attention whore and a fan of your work") and her passion for the creative process, read on:

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1. Tell me about yourself.

I'm a student at University of California, Santa Barbara at the moment, and looking to be a grad student in architecture or urban design. I really, really enjoy cooking; I try to have a brunch roughly once a month for my friends called "Dobre Dom" where I structure a menu around a theme. In addition to cooking, I love to read when I have time, and I have a fondness for food in books. I think the best thing to eat when reading is apples like Jo March. As much as I like cooking, I don't see myself becoming a professional chef in the future. The work is too repetitious and not very creative unless you're the head chef, and I thrive off of intensity and pressure. I love architecture for the same reasons I hate it: there are no right answers, and it is a bunch of high-pressure deadlines. Oh! I also dance a style called "blues-fusion." I started out in ballroom dancing but quit after two years. Now I'm the facilities manager for a social dance group at UCSB and DJ for them.

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2. Where did you grow up? Would you say your work (cooking, dance, architecture, etc.) is influenced by that area?

I grew up in Bay Area which I remember someone once said, "You shouldn't stay there too long or you'll become soft." Yes, that is absolutely true. I grew up absolutely spoiled when it came to education and culture. A lot of that is because of the area – while the state of California has one of the lowest rankings in public education, the Bay Area has one of the highest in the country – but it's also because of my parents. They're from the former Soviet Union, and they brought me up to be "an intellectual aristocrat," which is to say having an appreciation for ballet, classical literature, art, philosophy, and gourmet food. They taught me to live as high quality as I could, and that indulgence can happen without spending money. All in all, a very European upbringing.

This definitely has made me a snob. I kind of expect to always shoot for the finer things in life, and that what most people consider 'bourgeoisie' to be normal. Things like doing my shopping at the farmer's market for fresh vegetables, trying to buy "pieces" of art. I really think refinement and graces are something that can always be applicable, which makes me willing to be a little more...luxurious? in my work. But the goal is never to be pretentious about it.  I'm just a giant hedonist and I really advocate for indulging yourself.

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3. What does food (its creation, presentation, etc.) mean to you?

Since I grew up in a household where the second sentence to a guest is, "Are you hungry?" food means a lot to me in an emotional sense. Food has a very – maybe primarily – emotional component for me. It's how my family shows hospitality and love and care. We eat dinner together every night, my mother makes me scones and meat and bread to take with me to college. Making something well, choosing it for quality and taste, that is about showing care in multiple ways: you want your eater to have a good experience, you want to take pride in your work, you want to show proper appreciation for the quality of the ingredients that you have.

I am notorious (and you had to deal with this, too) for neglecting or dismissing aesthetic when it comes to food. This isn't because I don't think it matters but because I'm reacting to the current trend of Pinterest/visual food culture that focuses almost solely on how the food looks. There are, first off, loads of dishes that look terrible but are delicious, like curries and borscht and cutlets. Secondly, that Pinterest/food blog aesthetic completely and willfully ignores the mess and violence of food. Pinterest styling and so on chooses to ignore how food is a very complicated relationship to blood and shit and hunger. You can't cook without it and it's disingenuous to do so or pretend you can. I visit slaughter houses and I will not turn up my nose at dealing with offal or blood or compost. That stuff is part of cooking. The food blogging usually cuts it out or ignores it because it's not pretty, and that is a deceptive way to approach food. You don't have to kill your meat yourself but you should never forget that your chicken leg comes from an animal with liver and kidneys that are just as good to eat even if it's uglier.

I focus a LOT on quality. I want the best ingredients, I want it to be prepared well, I want my guests and I to sink into an appreciation of the food and what we're tasting. I also think ingredients should speak for themselves. One of my favorite desserts is fruit tart because the ingredients are the decoration. Sliced peaches are beautiful in and of themselves. They are their own advertisement – you can see if they are ripe or not by the color, the visual texture. There's an appeal to being able to identify what you're eating by sight that has to do with familiarity and that extends into comfort. But then that also provides an opportunity for surprise, because you can subvert the expectations of what it will taste like – like glazing that peach tart with a pepper jam, for example.

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4. What's your favorite dish to cook? To eat?

Believe it or not, my favorite dish to make is salad. It's a specific format that I copy from my mother and I love it because it can turn out so many different ways even if you follow the rules, which are: 1) green leaves of some kind,  2) sliced fruit, 3)cheese, 4)nuts, & 5) vinaigrette with any kind of vinegar. That's it, and you can always skip parts or whatever. But it is so simple and always turns out great. I love it.

My favorite to eat is probably – and this is where I remind you how big of a snob I am – super fresh foie gras with bread. It's heavenly. Though, to be honest: I love eating bread. I think bread is probably my favorite food ever.

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5. Where do you look for inspiration?

For me, food is an exercise in postmodernism and semiotics. A dish is the collection of my memories and tastes and associations combined for something new. It's a game of references, either cultural or personal, added together to create something new.

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6. What's your favorite band?

I don't know if I have one! I guess it would be Florence + the Machine if I had to pick. (I liked her before she was famous, blah blah blah)

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7. Top spot on your travel list?

South America. I've gone around most of the US and Europe but never further south than the Caribbean. I want to live in the Amazon for, like, two months and have an Indiana Jones adventure.

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8. If you were a building, what would you look like?

I'd probably be a house or a pavilion of some kind because I'm definitely a nester and I'm also obsessed with the "programming" of residence. I wouldn't be a house with a living room and kitchen and bedroom, but instead mixed up and multi-purpose. I'd like to be posh and tell you that I'm all clean lines and modernist, but I love decoration. I love taking modernist decoration and acting like a Baroque person and crowding every inch of the walls. There'd also be a lot of indoor/outdoor playing in the building-as-me, like a tree and an open air skylight in the living room and a vertical herb garden in the kitchen. I like to start with the familiar and quietly pull the rug out from underneath.

In this session, Ariella cooked blini and a chocolate orange tarte - both of which were delicious.

Padraic + Me + The Ginkgo Tree

Sometimes my personal work gets buried beneath everything else that piles up on my list of things to do. I'll get home really excited about the photos, edit and post a few, and then forget about them as I work on other items. I don't think every shoot is meant to be well-planned with intentions of sharing with the world; it's okay if it sinks into my external hard drive to be discovered years later. This shoot is an example of something that was almost forgotten, but luckily I pulled it out of the depths of my filing system and brought it to life. Here it is, five months later: Padraic + me + the ginkgo tree. photoofginkgotree4photoofginkgotree5photoofginkgotree1photoofginkgotree6photoofginkgotree8photoofginkgotree2photoofginkgotree7photoofginkgotree3photoofginkgotree9photoofginkgotree10

Kelsey

Bay Area Photographer | Mt. Tamalpais Photoshoot

Kelsey and I found each other on Instagram and knew we had to shoot! We decided to go to Mt. Tamalpais and stopped along the way by these Acacia trees. We then drove up the mountain along the winding road past waterfalls & redwoods until a scene of rolling green hills opened up before us. I can definitely understand why they film car commercials here! The mood of the shoot fluctuates between warm and bright to dark and moody, which, although a bit disjointed, is how I like things to be.

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Katherine at the Skyspace

San Francisco Fashion Photographer | de Young Museum | "Three Gems" Skyspace by James Turrell

Katherine is a stylist who owns a bunch of awesome clothes, and she also happens to great in front of the camera! I loved playing around with harsh light at the Skyspace, and the warmth of the walls really softened the harshness. We then wandered past the walls of the de Young and toward the Conservatory of Flowers, where a band was playing in the tunnel beneath the road. A beautiful day for photos!

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