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My Story

I grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles, but I am a country girl at heart! I am happiest on a mountain trail or wandering through an open field, camera in hand.

My love of photography began far from home, while traveling through Peru as an exchange student. I wanted to hold onto everything: how a place felt, what it looked like, and most of all, the incredible people I met along the way. That instinct to capture a moment before it disappears has shaped everything I've ever shot since.

As a high school Spanish teacher, I brought my travel photography into the classroom, using my own images of daily life in Peru, Mexico, and Europe to show students a world beyond textbook pages. As a mother of two, the camera came everywhere with me, and I was always taking photos of the ordinary, fleeting moments of raising kids because I knew early on that time moves faster than anyone can expect, and pictures are how we can slow it down.

Everything changed again when my daughter became an elite ballerina. Capturing a dancer mid-leap demanded technique. So I went back to studying, seeking out every workshop and tutorial I could find, building my craft year over year until I could reliably freeze movement, precision, and emotion in a single frame. Ballet photography remains my area of deepest expertise, born from thousands of hours spent behind the lens at classes, performances, and days out with my daughter and her ballet friends.

Today, my portfolio is deliberately eclectic. I shoot landscapes, macro nature, portraits, weddings, senior photos, headshots, and live events, alongside my ongoing ballet work. What ties it together is a consistent eye: I look for the smaller detail and the quieter beauty that gets overlooked at first glance, and then I build the photograph around it. I work primarily in natural light, favoring a light editing touch in Lightroom, and resisting heavy retouching. What I want most of all is for the real person to come through in the photo, not a fabricated version of them.

My years in the classroom taught me something that shows up in every shoot: how to put people at ease. Whether I am photographing a bride, a graduating senior, or a nervous headshot client, my teaching background gives me a knack for helping people relax in front of the camera. I don't like to be in front of the lens myself, so I understand the initial awkwardness and concerns. This understanding leads to the difference between a posed picture and one that actually tells the truth about who someone is.

My fine-art work (see the link to my store if you're interested in purchasing fine art pieces) spans moody landscapes, black-and-white studies, and dance photography, and has been featured in CanvasRebel, ShoutoutLA, Voyage LA, SheClicks, and Light & Composition, along with local gallery exhibitions of my fine-art and dance work. As a teacher, I understand the importance of being a lifelong learner, so I still continue to sharpen my craft through the weekly 52Frames photography challenge and competitions.

At the center of it all is a simple belief: photography is visual poetry. A single image can hold as many stories as there are people looking at it, which is exactly why I treat every photograph, whether it's a family portrait or a dancer suspended mid-air, as an act of seeking beauty and capturing life as art.