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. That activity taught me so much about my family and their past: images of my grandparents as young people creating a life for themselves in a new country. My parents as children, growing up in two different parts of the world. My older brother as a baby. My little sister and I playing 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 brain and provide me with a better understanding of myself.

That FEELING is still what MOves my creative heart.

I wanted to stop time so that I could remember it later on.