BECAUSE WE'RE MADE OF MEMORIES
 
 
A MANIFESTO
 
Hi! I'm Elis!
(pronounced like Elise)
I'm a wedding, portrait, and editorial photographer living in Maryland, just outside Washington, DC.
I've loved 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 before I could fully comprehend time itself. I wanted to ensure 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 hope 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 THAT YOU MAY REMEMBER AS WELL.