A little over a month ago, I had the privilege of photographing the wonderful yoga teachers at Yoga Kamala.  Yoga Kamala is located inside Spa Lamar (a fabulous spa in Scottsdale).  Everyone who works in this establishment are amazing people.  The yoga teachers are fabulous at what they do.  They are so inspiring!!  I highly recommend taking a yoga class there, and then getting a spa treatment afterwards!!   Here are a few photos from the session…

I met Natalie through Irene.  And since meeting her, I’m happy to be able to call her my friend.  She’s creative, has a huge heart, and is super fun.

I met up with Natalie and her husband, Julian, a few months ago.  She asked me to take some photos of the two of them, as well as some photos to possibly use as her portfolio picture on her photography website (check out her awesome work here!).  I have to credit the creativeness of this photo shoot to Natalie.  I just love how the pictures came out!

There was a strange (yet happy) man who joined in for a few photos…

Laura contacted me a while back to have her portraits taken.  She’s about to graduate from U of A with a nursing degree.  It’s an amazing achievement and milestone…  the perfect excuse to get dolled up and have some pictures taken!

As you’ll see in a moment, Laura is a beautiful girl.   But her true beauty comes from deep within her soul.   She has a heart of gold and has already done so much to make this world a better place.

When she is finished with school, she’s making her second trip to Africa as a Coordinator for the Support for International Change.  SIC’s mission is to limit the impact of HIV/AIDS in underserved communities and to train future leaders in global health and development.  From everything Laura has told me, it sounds like a challenging job, but SIC is making progress thanks to people like Laura who are devoting themselves to this cause.

After our photo session, I had the opportunity to sit down with Laura over some lemonade, and chat with her about her last visit to Africa.  I saw her pictures, her videos, and listened to her stories.  Not only did I learn about SIC, but I also learned more about the amazing people she met on her last journey to Africa.   The people of Tanzania live difficult lives and have very little.  Yet in the photos and videos Laura shared with me, these people seem so happy, and expressed their joys through the songs they sang, their smiles, and and laughter.  I found this to be so amazing!

When Laura was in Tanzania, she stayed with a family that she grew very close with.  Laura became especially close to one of the girls in this family.   Her name is Celia, and Laura has been working hard to raise money for Celia to continue her education.  Celia’s village in Tanzania is too poor to have a school, so Celia walks 45 minutes (one way) to take her classes.  Laura wants this young girl to finish her schooling, so please consider making donation (you can contact me for more information).  Even something small like $10 goes a long way!!  Laura will be making the tuition payments for Celia in person when she goes back to Africa, so she can ensure 100% of the money goes directly towards Celia’s education.

So…  as I mentioned before, Laura is not just beautiful on the outside.   She’s an amazing soul and I hope these photographs show some of her beautiful spirit!!

Lauren and Andrew’s mom has been dropping a few hints to her children.  She may have suggested it would be nice if they got some professional photographs taken.  She may have mentioned how this would make a nice Christmas gift for her.  And thankfully, her kids picked up on her hints and decided to make mom happy.  I just hope mom doesn’t read my blog so she is surprised on Christmas!!

This type of session was a first for me, and I felt challenged in a new way.  How do you make two adults, who are brother and sister, NOT look like they are an engaged couple?  Thankfully, Lauren and Andrew made it pretty easy for me to figure out.  They were awesome to work with, especially when they busted out their dance moves, joked around with each other, and supported one another with high fives after every fabulous pose.  They are definitely awesome!

Here are a few of my favs from the session…

Welcome to my new blog!!  I thought I would kick it off with my first session of 2010.

Last weekend, I met Alex downtown to do some portraits for him.  Alex has an important birthday coming up, and these photos are a cool way to look back at this time in his life.

As for me, this was an especially fun project because I don’t get to work with a lot of men, let alone men who actually want their photo taken!

The next two photos I had the opportunity to try out the Brenizer Method (developed by Ryan Brenizer).  I’ve been wanting to try this technique for a while now, and this session had a few opportunities for me test it out.  Not too bad for a first try!  (For instructions on this technique, here’s a great tutorial by Richard Bui.

When I do portraits for people, I always ask them what they love to do, what’s important to them, and what their style is.  Well… Alex has two gorgeous dogs at home that mean the world to him, and we were originally going to try to incorporate them in the session but decided it might be a little to difficult to bring the dogs downtown.  The other thing Alex mentioned (with as much enthusiasm as his love for his dogs) was the fact that he loves music.  Apparently, his iPod goes everywhere with him.  Then Alex found a photo that inspired him to bring his iPod along… it just all worked out.  So the photos below hopefully show a little bit more of who Alex is.

Before we called it quits, Alex mentioned a colorful wall he passed on his way to meet me.  So we circled around and sure enough, it was a super cool wall that was perfect for photos.  Nice eye Alex!

Thanks Alex for the asking me to do some portraits for you!  Happy Birthday!