I DO WHAT I DO BECAUSE WE'RE MADE OF MEMORIES

A MANIFESTO
Hi! I'm Elis (pronounced like Elise).
I'm a wedding, portrait, and editorial photographer living just outside Washington DC.
I've had an interest in photography for as long as I can remember. I would bring my point-and-shoot camera to school anytime I got my hands on a roll of film. I was acutely aware of the passage of time even before I could fully comprehend it, and I wanted to make sure I would remember those moments later in life. Photography was my solution to that. Still is.
But it wasn't until I stepped into a darkroom for the first time while studying to become a journalist, that it dawned on me that photography could be my career. It would still take a few years for me to step away from the conventional path and dive headfirst into what I kept as a passion on the backburner.
When I set out to become a photographer,
my main drive was the idea of eternalizing moments.
As a child, I adored looking through my family’s photo albums. I'm sure a lot of you share that feeling. Doing that taught me so much about myself, my family, and our past: images of my grandparents as young people creating a life for themselves in a new country; my parents as children, growing up in different parts of the world; my older brother as a baby; my little sister and I playing together when we were toddlers. Those are memories that either didn’t happen to me or I was too young to retain them. So photos held this MAGICAL ABILITY to infuse these moments into my mind's eye and provide me with a better understanding of my place in this world.
That FEELING is still what MOves my creative heart.
I DOCUMENT MOMENTS so that I CAN remember THEM later on.
I WANT TO STOP TIME FOR YOU TOO, SO YOU MAY REMEMBER AS WELL.