Orlando Headshots

Happy Birthday, Ava!

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Thu, 15 Jun 2017 17:26:00 +0000

Ava turned one year old and the decorations are to die for! They’re so colorful, what kid wouldn’t be mezmerized by Tinkerbell and her friends. I’d even love a birthday party like this as an adult! OK, maybe not. But I still love all those beautiful colors!

David & Leslie Maternity Photo Shoot

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Fri, 09 Jun 2017 11:32:00 +0000

My brother and his wife were expecting their second child and we got some beautiful shots of them about 6 weeks before he was born.

The Little Mermaid

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Fri, 06 Sep 2013 16:46:00 +0000

Beautiful Stephanie. Fingers crossed for your audition!

Kevin

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Tue, 03 May 2011 22:11:00 +0000

I have photographed Kevin's beautiful family many times, so when he needed headshots, naturally he came to me!

Yram, Take Two!

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Tue, 03 May 2011 17:45:00 +0000

Yram is back! And this time we got creative in our photo shoot. He had an idea so we went with it.

Kimberly Button of greenWell Consulting

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:19:00 +0000

If you are interested in becoming more "green," then you should get in touch with Kimberly Button of greenWell, an eco-wellness consulting company right here in Orlando. Former health issues steered Kim toward living a natural, healthy lifestyle and she can help you, your home, and/or your company become greener and more toxin-free!

Kim is as cute as her name implies! We became fast friends as we walked around Winter Park chatting and doing her headshots. She is sweet, bubbly, and funny. You can also keep up with her and her articles about living a healthier lifestyle (for you and the planet) on her website, GetGreenBeWell.com.

Thanks for a great day, Kim! I'm looking forward to our new adventures in green living!

Ginette's Headshots

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 01:24:00 +0000

You may remember Ginette from a boudoir shoot we did last year. Well she's back and this time she needed some headshots.
This photo gave me a little Twilight inspiration. So I turned her into a vampire. A vegetarian vampire, of course!

Ginette throws fabulous parties for kids and grown-ups too! Check out her website for more information: Butterfly Dreams. Thanks Ginette! Your photo shoots are always fun!

Disney's BoardWalk

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 01:28:00 +0000

It's almost embarrassing how long it has taken me to get this post done. I have been so busy in the last few months. Please forgive me! Brett and I had a photo excursion at Disney's BoardWalk a few months ago. It was a lot of fun, and I really should take more time to do these things more often!

I normally hate seagulls. Once when I was at Sea World with my niece and mother, a seagull swooped down and stole the ice cream right out of my cone! On this day they were behaving, though. They're actually kind of cute. This one looks me right in the eye. No fear. They're probably used to people feeding them. Sorry dude, no fries for you! He posed for me anyway. Mmmm…Beaches and Cream – home of yummy delights! Mine. Brett's. We tried to find that golden hour where there is still light in the sky, but it's dark enough for the lights to shine. This is pretty close! Brett, let's do this again soon!

Marybackwards Design

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 02:36:00 +0000

Yram is Mary, backwards. Marybackwards Design was created by Yram Rivera who does event design and decor in Orlando. He recently decorated my house for Christmas – I know, I know, some of you balk because it’s not even Thanksgiving yet. But so what! I don’t care! I *heart* the holidays and my house looks awesome! It’s all part of the “holiday season” anyway. See the pictures on his blog.

He also needed new headshots for his website and marketing materials. Isn’t he fabulous? ;)

He is seriously talented. Look him up if you need help decorating for the holidays. He’s a professional Christmas tree decorator. :)

Mariah Heads Back to School!

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 22:47:00 +0000

Here she is! My awesome niece. I told you she was a cutie-pie!! A few days before classes began we drove to her new school to do some school pictures. I can’t believe she is already in middle school!

There was a storm a-brewin’ and the wind was blowing her hair all over the place. I brought some lights with me because I wanted to play a little, but my equipment didn’t stand a chance against Mother Nature. She is not one to be reckoned with. So this was a quick little photo shoot. And then we brought it indoors – and right on time, because it started pouring!

Don’t be fooled by the blue sky and puffy white clouds. Just over my shoulder a big, black cloud was quickly advancing upon us.

She’s so sweet! (And smart…have I mentioned that she repeatedly scores highest in her school on her FCATs???) Ok, no more bragging.

Epcot Photo Shoot

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:04:00 +0000

My friend Brett mentioned that he has an interest in photography and had recently purchased a DSLR camera but didn’t know how to make the most of it. So we thought it would be fun to go to one of the theme parks and just shoot some pictures.

Now, I am not a fan of crowded, hot, loud, touristy areas. But since I live in Orlando – tourist Mecca – I decided to embrace it. I always had easy access to Disney as a kid and I worked there for seven years, so I quickly lost interest in “playing in the parks.” But enough time has passed that I can now appreciate it again! We decided that Epcot would have an interesting selection of subjects to photograph. And we were right! We traveled the world in a few short hours! (Cheesy, I know.)

This was in France where we had delicious pastries from the pâtisserie – how’s THAT for two years of high school French! Madame Pissier would be so proud! (She certainly was not proud back then when I cared more about chatting with my friends – in English, no less – than I did about conjugating French verbs!!)
Mmmm…bread, or miche de pain. Though, I must admit, this bread was on display and probably hard as a rock.
Now these were delicious croissants de chocolat. Though I have a hard time picturing an actual French pâtisserie serving croissants with chocolate in them. It seems so ordinary – as though these have been Americanized. I could be wrong. ;)
Brett is a graphic designer for Disney (among other things), and this is one of his creations! I hope I didn’t just “destroy the magic” or get him in trouble, since this is all proprietary work. But he is so super talented! I just had to show him off. :) By the way, Brett has created a website to help people make their computers safe! Check it out here!
Then we traveled to Morocco. There were so many cool little things there and the lighting was often dark and mysterious, so this was fun!
Camels always remind me of the summer I spent in Bahrain. Every day we passed a camel on our way to work and I named him Cletus. We thought it would be fun to ride a camel – because that’s what you do when you go to the middle east! But when we got there, the camels would groan every time they had to get up with the extra weight of a person on their backs. Their poor little wobbly knees probably had camel arthritis or something, so I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I still think about Cletus every time I see a camel. (Could I have said the word camel any more? I said it six times! And now seven!)
Oooh…mysterious plumes of smoke from burning incense!
Sunset over the Tour Eiffel. My blogging program must have compressed the image too much (I’m guessing, but what do I know!) and that created the banding in the sky. Oh well.
Mexico had lots of colorful things to photograph. Who wants to buy fake veggies on a rope?
They sure look pretty, though! (Have I mentioned that red peppers are show-offs?)
And the obligatory shot of “the Epcot ball” which houses Spaceship Earth. Also known as “the giant golf ball.”

As soon as the weather cools off to a less stifling 75 degrees or below, we’ll have another photography adventure at Disney. It was fun to take pictures just for fun and just for me. I love my clients and doing their portraits, but I love photography just for the fun of it too.

Welcome, Chloe!

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 15:10:00 +0000

You may remember Wanda from her mommy-to-be shoot a few months ago:

Well, a few weeks ago little baby Chloe was born! I visited them at the hospital to take a few pictures.

How many women look that beautiful so soon after having a baby?? She’s gorgeous! Congratulations Wanda!

Welcome, Sophie!

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:14:00 +0000

A couple of months ago I did a Mommy-to-Be photo shoot for Adriana. Well this week I got to photograph her little girl, Sophie. Adriana couldn’t be happier, and Sophie was such a doll to work with. Here’s a before:
And here’s the after:

Joe’s Headshots

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 14:06:00 +0000

Joe wants new pictures to send his family so they won’t forget what he looks like. ;) We walked around Winter Park and took a few shots, but mostly we laughed a lot! Doesn’t he look a bit like Taye Diggs?

Bruschetta Recipe with Pictures

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 01:05:00 +0000

I’m not a fan of tomatoes. They’re squishy and they taste so tomatoey – and those seeds! Ugh. I can’t even stand picking them out of my salad, only to find SEEDS lurking in the leaves. Traumatizing. (Who’s being dramatic?)

But I do love bruschetta! Restaurant-style, that is. When people make it at home it always tastes like chopped up plain tomatoes on bread. What’s appetizing about that? You have to marinate the tomatoes, people! The other day I got it in my head that I was going to make some and that they were going to taste like something I would order at a restaurant. And by golly they did!

I chopped up a couple of tomatoes and half an onion and tossed them together with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, some garlic cloves, and a few spices. You could probably use a red or white wine vinegar instead of the balsamic if you’re feeling ornery. The most important part of this is to let it marinate in the fridge for a couple of hours!! Let there be a marriage of flavors. It tastes incredibly good when you wait. And you know what they say about those who wait. Doesn’t it make your mouth water just looking at the picture?? If you could only smell it…

Traditionally (and I use that term loosely, because really, what do I know about anything traditional), bruschetta is served on sliced French bread. I did not have French bread in the house. It goes stale very quickly. However, I did have some pita bread! And let me tell you, it was FABULOUS! So whatever you decide to use, the process is the same. I cut the pita into six pieces. Then I sprayed butter on both sides and sprinkled garlic salt on them. If you want to cut the sodium down you could rub them (they appreciate the massage) with raw garlic, or just use garlic powder. Or you could omit this step altogether. I find that it gives it a lip-smacking garlicky saltiness. Then I toasted them for a few minutes. It’s really up to you how much to toast them. I like the pita to be a little on the crispy side. A pita crisp, if you will.

After the bread is toasted, just spoon some of the marinated tomato / onion mixture on it, and top with some cheese! I used mozzarella (it’s what was in the fridge), but crumbled feta (or whatever you like, really) would work just as well. The cheese is optional, but it is sooooo good!

Just look at it! It’s beautiful! I had it as an appetizer before dinner, and it was so good that the next day I had it for lunch. And it is probably pretty good for you! You’ve got your heart-healthy oils, lycopene, calcium … really, it’s next to perfect.

Bruschetta Recipe
Loaf of French Bread or Pita Bread
Spray Butter
Garlic Salt
Marinated Tomatoes / Onions
2 to 3 tomatoes, chopped
1/2 onion, diced
1/4 C. Olive Oil
1/8 C. Balsamic Vinegar
1 tbsp Parsley
2 Garlic Cloves, minced
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp dill
1/2 tsp basil
1/8 tsp pepper
Feel free to add more or less of the ingredients above. For some things I didn’t measure, I eyeballed it. Toss ingredients together in a bowl. Refrigerate 2 hours. Serve on bread. Top with cheese. Delish!

Yuliya

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 17:58:00 +0000

Yuliya lives in Miami, but is originally from Ukraine. She facilitates adoptions of Ukrainian orphans by American families. What she does is truly fascinating. We had two days scheduled to do a headshot photo shoot, but it rained the second day – it being April and all! The sky was black and hail pelted my car! So we went shopping at the mall instead. MAC loves us! We’ll reschedule the rest of her shoot when it is not raining!

We spent an afternoon walking around Winter Park and had a great time talking and taking pictures. We stopped by a little cafe to have tiramisu and cappuccino. Yuliya’s taste in food is a bit more refined so she was a little disappointed in the tiramisu. But I thought it was good! The cappuccino wasn’t hot enough, but that may be a good thing since I live in Orlando and the weather was in the mid 80s!

Sofrito Documentary

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:40:00 +0000

Yes, this is a headshot photography blog. But it is my photography blog, so I’m going to blog about cooking. And besides, I took pictures, so it is still photography-related! :)

Sofrito is a base used for cooking in Spanish cuisine. It can be used in a lot of things, but mostly for beans, soups, stews, and rice. It’s so flavorful that I like to put it in ground beef for tasty burgers and empanadas. Usually it is sautéed in a pan with some Pam or other oil before the rest of the ingredients are added. It smells so good when it is being sautéed! You can buy it in the Spanish frozen food section of certain grocery stores, and that stuff is pretty good. But my mom likes to make her own sometimes so she can freeze it and have it on hand when she wants it. Here’s her recipe. It varies, but this is how she made it this particular day.

About 20 cloves of garlic. We’re wild in our kitchen, we don’t measure. We approximate. That day we felt like using 20 cloves (is it 20? Did someone count them in the picture? I didn’t). Next week we might use 30. You just never know how CRAZY we’re gonna get! Two to three heads of garlic are what you’ll need. (Also, I just read the Twilight series and figured a little extra garlic couldn’t hurt…)

3 green peppers and 2 red peppers. Normally you would just use the green peppers, but she decided to spice things up this time (no pun intended, seriously!). There’s my beautiful mom smashing some garlic.
That’s a pilón, otherwise known as a mortar and pestle. I don’t think we used it, but we’ll pretend we did, because every Hispanic house has one, and we don’t want to have our membership revoked.
Oh cilantro, how I loveth and hateth thee so. See, I have some beef with cilantro. Actually, I have beef with people who abuse cilantro. It is a very powerful herb! And it has the capacity of overwhelming a dish if allowed to do so. In small doses it can be good; more often than not it is used too liberally and then it’s all I can taste. Normally I have restaurants hold the cilantro, for they have little restraint. However, my mother insists it is a vital ingredient to sofrito, so I have to accept it.Red peppers are show-offs. Look at that cluster of seeds! Here’s the green pepper. He didn’t want to show off like his red cousin. He’s a little more modest. But that didn’t stop me from pushing him out of his comfort zone! Sometimes I get carried away in Photoshop.This is my mom’s trusty old cookbook. How can you go wrong when the book explains that before you cook a chicken, you have to kill it and deplume it? Oh, don’t act all shocked like you didn’t know they did that to the chicken nuggets you ate today from Wendy’s. She’s showing that green pepper who’s boss! More peppers. Still putting the smackdown!These are ajies dulces, or small, sweet cooking peppers (not to be confused with habanero chiles). They do look very similar to habaneros, but they’re not as big or as hot. They’re the runts – the black sheep, if you will. Only they’re green and orange. And sometimes yellow. And maybe red. In the bottom right corner of the picture you can see the onions. That’s right, they’re covered by my watermark. But they’re there! There’s that cilantro, trying to take over the world. You need a cup of olive oil, otherwise the blender won’t like you very much.
Here are all the colorful ingredients ready for a whirl.
Mom adding more of that herb CILANTRO into the mix. Can you smell it? It’s taking over already. Here it is after being chopped, processed and pureed. Isn’t it colorful?
We made enough for three jars. Two will go in the freezer for later, and one in the fridge. If you’ve never cooked with sofrito before, give it a try. It spices up your meal in a great way. It’s got all the essentials in it! It’s fabuloso!

Sofrito
2 to 3 heads of garlic, peeled

5 green peppers, chopped (you can substitute a couple of red ones if you like)
1 bunch cilantro, rinsed

4 medium onions, chopped
1/2 pound ajies dulces (small sweet cooking peppers), seeds removed

2 tsp cumin

1 cup olive oil

Put it all in a food processor or a blender and you’re good to go! This recipe makes a lot, so you can cut it in half if you like. Buen provecho!

Impromptu Photo Shoot

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:07:00 +0000

Her name is Mariah and she is the sweetest little cutie-pie in the world! And I’m not biased, though she is my niece! ;) She is smart, funny, and a friend to animals. When she grows up she plans on becoming an animal scientist and opening an animal learning center. Her favorite color is pink – in her world everything would be pink, including the sky! She has a little dog named Max (Maximus Prime is what I call him, to her chagrin) who has an under bite. You can’t pull anything over on this little one – she’s too smart for her own good (whatever that means)! At the end of the month she will be eleven years old, but to me she’ll always be three.

Orlando Headshots Blog Facelift

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 10:51:00 +0000

This poor little blog got a much-needed facelift. It’s still a work in progress, but I think this is definitely an improvement! I’ll be working on a new header in the coming days (maybe even today if inspiration strikes)! I spent several hours revamping another blog a couple of days ago, and now that I’m such a pro this blog’s facelift was super easy! I have a few photo shoots to post in the coming days, and since I have streamlined my blogging applications, it really will happen! I’m not going to neglect this little blog anymore – I promise! :)

Basketball Game

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:47:00 +0000

Here is my brother David going for a rebound, I think! I was too busy snapping away to pay attention to what was actually going on! I should work on that. So, I thought I'd make him a magazine cover immortalizing his talent.

All Star Baseball

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 16:27:00 +0000

My brother was recently in a baseball all-star game, so I showed up to support him and take some pictures. Then I started playing around in Photoshop, and this is what I came up with!

I had it printed and I'm giving it to him for Christmas. So then of course I had to make posters for my two other brothers. But I'll save those for later. Happy Holidays!

Photo shoot with my cousin

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 01:36:00 +0000

I got to spend some time with my cousin and her son while they were in Orlando on vacation, so we did a photo shoot at Downtown Disney.
We also did a studio shoot, and this was my favorite:

Valentin Menjega

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:05:00 +0000

I recently did some headshots for Valentin Menjega who was an aerialist for the Cirque du Soleil show Varekai. Here are a couple of the images from that day.

Florida International Beer Festival

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:38:00 +0000

I have been pretty busy with non-headshot related projects, so I figured I would post some other things I have been up to. I actually designed this in April, but I'm sure you will forgive me for posting it now! I won a poster design contest for the Florida International Beer Festival. I had so much fun creating this in Photoshop. And anyone who knows me well knows I like a good beer, so this was right up my alley. The festival was great too. The weather was nice (for Florida in April!) and the beer selection wasn't bad either. So here it is: the official poster of the 15th Annual Florida International Beer Festival (was that too dorky? oh well, too bad):

Isn't it mouth-wateringly delicious?

Orlando Headshots

noreply@blogger.com (Ana) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 23:56:00 +0000

Visit the new website at www.anaphotodesign.com to view my portfolio of headshots. I really try to capture the person's personality and focus on bringing something special out of them. I also like to make the eyes the focal point of the headshot. I have seen so many headshots that look plain and lifeless that I want to ensure mine are different. So check it out!