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.

1 / 6

INSPIRATION

Dancing shadows, hazy sunsets, curtains in the breeze, streams of light through the trees, bare feet on moss, rolling fog, terraced gardens, the smell of books and the sound of rain, maps, old photographs, and musical crescendos.