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About Little Blue World Photography
LBW was born in 2008 out of my love of memories. I remember sitting in my mom's closet as a kid and going through this old blue leather case filled with pictures for hours, over and over again. There were old black and white pictures of people I didn't recognize and newer ones of our family. I remember every time I opened the case hoping there would be a new photo in there, one I hadn't seen, a new photo to memorize. Obviously, that didn't happen very often! Kids today are photographed at a rate unlike any generation before them, but how often are those photos of the whole family? How often are they printed? How many will be lost in the cloud at some point in the future, never to be seen again? That box is the reason it's so important to me that my clients print their photos and keep them somewhere in their home for their children to discover one day.
The name came from a line in a Tori Amos song that just stuck with me, "God I love to turn my little blue world upside down..." and is reminder that with my work I get to share how I see the world with you.
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Hi! I'm Valeri.
I've lived in LA my whole life and no one can romanticize this city like I can. I developed my first roll of film in junior high. I learned on film and still get nostalgic about the smell of developer on my hands. I have always been "the girl with the camera". When I toured with a musical when I was 15, all the other kids were carrying disposable cameras and I had an SLR and 10 rolls of film. In college, I was the one who was always taking photos of my friends. It didn't occur to me that people could take pictures as a real job until I was almost 30.
In my free time I read, I'm a theatre nerd, I love to travel, and I love live music. I have two kids, a cat, and a partner who is endlessly supportive of this little dream of mine. I love making sourdough and hopped on that bandwagon three years after everyone else did, so clearly I'm on top of cultural trends. I love trash television (Got 90 Day opinions? Wanna rant about Love is Blind? LET'S TALK). Ice cream is at the bottom of my food pyramid.
When I really think about it, I get overwhelmed at the thought of these photos being the ones families will carry with them forever. I see pictures of newborns I took 10 years ago and think about where those kids are today and where they'll be in another ten years. I imagine them showing those pictures to their future partners and future children and I get a little teary at the thought that I am a part of that, in whatever small way.