Hello and Welcome!!

My name is Araxi and I am a photographer here in Los Angeles. I am also a wife to the most supportive man ever, and a mom to an insanely sweet and hysterical little three and a half year old boy. This blog serves as a way for me to record this journey of mine, share ideas and learn from the people that visit. So feel free to leave comments, ask questions, and share ideas because I would LOVE to hear from you. Thank you for visiting and please be warned of the frequent use of exclamation points! I'm not yelling I'm just happy to be here.

If you are looking for a photographer and you like the work you see here please contact me about availability and pricing at info@araxiphotography.com


A Session Just Because

I had worked up a whole post in my head that tied into this shoot but this weather has me wanting to crawl into bed with my toe socks on and read a book. I will definitely be posting my thoughts about “Just Because” sessions and why I think they are so fun and so important, but I will leave you with the pictures from that day because quite frankly I couldn’t wait to post them. She was so much fun. Smart, funny and incredibly outgoing. We hit it off over the phone before I even met her!

She is fabulous!

Berg and Carmen - Family Session

I have so much blogging to do its not even funny, but I am done with sessions for this year so I will be playing catch up in the next few days. Hopefully this will give me the opportunity to share some personal stuff with you and let you in on what I have been up to lately. In the meantime though, I don’t know if any of you are on Twitter but it has seriously become my latest addiction. I absolutely love it because throughout my day I have so many random thoughts or little things that I notice, and its great to have a place to share that randomness. If you are signed up and want to follow me just click here!

Ok, on to my family session. A few weeks ago I met up with Berg and Carmen to shoot their Christmas card pictures. It was probably one of the quickest sessions I have ever shot. I think we finished in less than an hour, but we had some really nice light during that time! Here are a few of my favorites.

She wasn’t too excited about wearing the bonnet but at least we got one of her in it.

Maddie: The Bat Mitzvah

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to photograph a very special event, for a very special family. Lisa invited me to document Maddie’s Bat Mitzvah and to be honest when she first asked me I was nervous. I didn’t know a thing about Bat Mitzvah’s and what to expect. I had a million questions. I had never really looked at pictures from another Bat Mitzvah but in the end I think that actually worked in my favor.  I was excited that Lisa trusted me enough to do this. I learned so much during the process.

There were so much about this day that was special but my favorite was during the actual ceremony where her parents prepare a few words about their daughter. It was so moving to see how proud her parents were of her. Maddie you are an incredible young woman! Thank you for letting me be a part of this day.

Oh and Lisa hired Foto Cabina who seriously have THE BEST photo booths. I love them and wish I could have one at home!

Today Im Thankful For:

I hope everyone enjoys a beautiful Thanksgiving surrounded by family, and friends.

The In Between

For me photography is all about the in between. When people are unaware that I am there or, for a moment forget that I have a camera, is when I really feel like something special happens. This session had a couple of those moments and many of those turned out to be my favorites.

Family Session

Lately I have been loving repeat sessions I have had! It has been so much fun to watch these little guys grow up and its amazing how much changes in a year. Last week I got together with Aimee and Maite to photograph the family and children again. You can see the last session here on my old blog (and don’t judge my old blog Im seriously embarassed to leave it up but its my journey so I do) Here are a few of my favorites. 

 

A Family Expecting

When I found out she was pregnant I nearly fell over. She is my friend and I knew what this meant to her. Then when I found out she was having twins I did fall over. We had gone to lunch a few weeks before and she didnt tell me! She wanted to wait and I completely understood, but while we were at lunch I received another phone call from Nick to tell me one of our other friends was pregnant with twins. So joyfully, I shared this with her and it must have taken every ounce of her not to say anything. She didn’t even flinch! This last week I had the honor of photographing her and her family and I had so much fun just being with them. Thank you for letting me share time with you and the family. I am so grateful. Can’t wait to meet the twins! Here are some of my favorites.

This is one of my favorite portraits.

Jesse and Lisa: I Do

Last weekend I had the pleasure of joining the fabulously talented Brian Khang for a wedding in Orange County. You all might remember that Brian shot our family portraits a few months back and it was so much fun to hang out with him again.

Jesse and Lisa had a beautiful wedding, and their friends and family truly enjoyed every minute of the day with them. They were warm, and welcoming and it was such a pleasure to be there. Their ceremony was held at Our Lady of La Vang perish followed by the reception at the Doubletree Hotel, but not before stopping at the OC Performing Arts Center for some portraits. The light at the OCPAC was incredible and the surroundings where just beautiful! Here are some of my favorite shots.

This just cracked me up. I love Jesse’s expression.

They had an awesome DJ (need to find out his name) who played some crazy jazzed out versions of popular hip hop songs. Loved it and so did their guests!

A Family Session

Yesterday I had a the great pleasure of photographing Lisa and her family. I was so glad they were up for doing an outdoorsy shoot and decided to go to Malibu Creek State Park. This has quickly become one of my new favorite places to shoot. The light and our surroundings where so beautiful and they were all such great sports about all the bugs.  Thank you so much for spending a part of your day with me and I can’t wait to shoot Maddie’s Bat-Mitzvah in just a few weeks! Here are some of my favorites!

The Family

Gorgeous Mom

On Being Green

Ok so I haven’t posted any green links for a while so I thought I would start off by updating you on some of the things I bought back on Earth Day and give you some reviews. Lately we are hearing so much more about the enviornment especially with this crazy election and for me I found that there are some really simple, non life altering things I can do on a daily basis to do my part. At the risk of sounding like a complete dork its actually kind of fun!

One of the first things I did was to sign up for Green Dimes. It is a service that for a small fee helps eliminate a big portion of the junk mail we receive. I am happy to report that it actually works!! I would say our junk mail has been reduced by about 80%.  Alex is no longer getting credit card applications! Green Dimes made it really easy sign up, and there are certain companies that you have to actually write to in order for them to take you off their mailing list. For those companies Green Dimes actually sends you little postcards (with postage!) , and all you have to do is sign and send them off. Very cool and totally worth it.

Next I got each one of us a SIGG bottle. These are awesome. I keep each of ours filled with water in the refrigerator. The only drawback I found with these is once you take them out of the refrigerator the water does not stay cold for very long and Im not a big fan of room temperature water. They come in great styles and even my little one likes it! Heres the one I got.

Speaking of water I also got a Brita filter (I was very productive this Earth Day) and it turned out to be one of my favorite things. Seriously if I was Oprah I would give you all one right now. I was really tired of the amount of plastic bottles we were using. Even though we recycle them its a pain to save and to be honest we would waste it. Most of the time we would leave the bottles out half empty (or half full depending on how you want to look at it). This was the perfect solution and the water is really tasty!!

During this time we also had our carpets cleaned. It never occurred to me that you could have your carpets GREEN cleaned! A friend of mine started a business called Foster’s Carpet Cleaning and while I wanted to review it much sooner and tell the world about it to help my friends, I also wanted to make sure it really worked and lived up to the expectation. I wanted to make sure that in a few weeks the carpet stains would not resurface and the promises that were made where real. Let me tell you they exceeded my expectations. My carpets looked UHMAZING! Its been about 2 months and no stains have resurfaced. I was weary of getting the carpets cleaned because one, its hard to be gone all day when you have a small child and two the chemicals that they use to clean carpets are ridiculously toxic to the air we breath inside our homes both to us and our pets. This method of cleaning is a dry clean so the carpet was dry immediately and no harsh chemicals were used in the process. I wont go into detail about the process but you can check out their website and give them a call. Michael is extremely helpful and knowledgeable and both him and his wife are so nice! You will love them!

So there you have it. A few things that can help you be a little more green. I’m currently looking into getting some cool business cards that use 100% recycled paper. Ill let you know how that goes. Also if any of you photographers have some vendors that you can recommend that offer green or more enviormentally friendly products drop me a line! Thanks for reading :) I promise to have a post with pictures soon.


AJAXed with AWP