a few things you should know.

Let us start by saying that usually, this blog is all about photo tips that can be useful or inspirational to our readers. But today, we decided to shake things up. Why, you may ask? Well, we recently realized that our small community has gotten a lot bigger (let’s cheers to that!!!), and maybe some of you don’t know much about us yet. So we we figured it would be fun to make a more personal post and spill the beans.

Let’s get started, shall we?

#1 Partners in life and in business (Yes! We went all in!)

We met on the second day of orientation back in college almost six years ago. There were hundreds of people walking towards an auditorium, so we are still not clear how we ended up talking.

But it happened! It was the best thing that could have ever happen to us. Our mutual passion for Photography brought us together even more, and we began collaborating on different projects. Fast forward a few years and here we are: in love and working together! We always wonder, what would have happened if one of us was walking faster or slower? Our conclusion is that some things are really meant to be :)

#2 There‘s a serious debate on who proposed to who (and we really mean SERIOUS).

We got engaged during a cold day in February. We had been talking about getting married for a while and our initial thought was to have a September wedding.

Our families are spread all around the globe, so initially we were just going to keep it simple. Go to the courthouse and then eventually do a couple of celebrations in our hometowns at a later time. In the meantime, we were getting ready for our graduation to which our parents were planning to attend. When they found out we were talking about getting married, they all expressed the desire to be present at the courthouse. One of us (we are not going to reveal who, so we don’t clog your judgement) said, “Would it be the same if we get married in May instead of September?” To which the other (again, we are not saying who because we want you to be impartial) responded, “Sure. Why not?”…And in the blink of an eye we were engaged! As of today, we are still debating on whether or not there was a proposal.

# 3 Family is EVERYTHING.

As you may have guessed already our families mean the world to us. They are our anchors to the ground, our main supporters, a shoulder to lean on, and a great source of happiness and peace.

They don’t live in Chicago and sometimes we don’t get to see them as often as we wish, so we always try to do our best effort to be present as much as possible… sometimes that means calling them twenty times a day ;) You know what they say, family is forever!

#4 We are addicted to food. Literally.

The word diet has a real short life span in our household. We absolutely love eating everything! To make it worse, we also like to cook, so don’t be surprised to hear that we made homemade pasta, pizza, cookies, cakes, etc As you can see we are in an all carbs diet.

#5 Photography is our heaven.

Our love for Photography goes way back in the days. We started playing with cameras as a way to escape our daily routines. We both were working jobs that were very technical and required many hours sitting at a desk. Photography was our way to escape the routine and explore the world around us.

#6 Our favorite Photo masters.

We had to take a break to think about this one and it almost feels impossible to choose a favorite. To be honest, if we knew you had all the time in this world to read this post the list would be pretty long! Now, since we know you probably have time during your lunch break, we are going to keep it short and sweet. Our top three are (drums rolling): 3] Henri Cartier-Bresson. We think this French artist has defined the way we look at simple moments in life. If you haven’t done it yet, google The Decisive Moment and be ready to get your mind blown away. 2] Annie Leibovitz. We have one word to describe her photographs: majestic. And don’t let us get started on the lighting aspect. 1] Edward Weston. If you are a nature lover like us, you definitely want to check his work! His black and white landscapes are simply gorgeous. Plus he photographed other artist like Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera & Tina Modotti to name a few.

#7 Our latest camera obsession.

We get this question pretty often and to be honest there’s never just one answer. Lately, we have been taking a lot of photographs with the Polaroid 600SE. It’s a manual Polaroid camera (you read that right. Manual!) that we love to use on road trips or special occasions….Some like to take their snaps with their cellphones…we like to keep it traditional ;)

#8 Our favorite subject.

This one it’s easy: you are our favorite subject! We have a lot of fun photographing people, and we love figuring out new ways to immortalize their lives and stories.
We recently started experimenting with video as well (have you seen our UnDefining Women’s project yet?), so don’t be surprised if you start seeing more of that!

#9 We don’t accept work that requires heavy editing on the human body.

We set this as one of our core goals, when we decided to embark in this journey. You might wondering what heavy editing means and why wouldn’t we want to do something like that?

Well, the answer is quite simple. We want to have a positive impact on the people we encounter and photograph and we know that there’s a lot of pressure when it comes to beauty and what beautiful should look like. Self-improvement is very important, but we realize that sometimes is easy to get caught up in the vortex of 'unreal expectations' and feel we are falling too short in comparison to others.

When we photograph you, our main goal is to show how unique you are. Your age, the shape of your body, those little wrinkles in your face and everything else in between, make you a 'TRUE BEAUTY'. When you come for your session, whether is for fun or for work, we want to do our best to honor that.

#10 We started collecting Photography books.

How not to right? If you ever come visit us, you will see that we have tons of Photography books spread all around the house. We like to look at the work of other artists for inspiration, and we also want our home to reflect who we are (literally two Photo nerds!). Our latest additions are: a book by Walker Evans: American Photograph, and one by Charlotte Cotton: Photography is Magic.

If you love Photography we highly recommend both of them!

Now that you have made it all the way down to the list, it’s time to take it to the next level…What you say, shall we be friends? ;)

Before you go, leave a comment and tell us who you think proposed to who! Believe us, the struggle is getting real on that one!

Also, we have a trip diary coming soon (we are taking you to an undisclosed location in Europe!) Make sure to subscribe to our monthly newsletter, so you don’t miss it.