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While I've loved photography all my life, my professional journey began as a marketing professional. I've been fortunate (and stubborn) enough to keep bringing photography into what I do for a living. But photography took a protagonist seat in my life when we had kids and realized everything us and our family were missing out. Being an immigrant can feel very lonely often times. Even in an inclusive and multi-cultural country like Canada. Living afar, our relatives don't get to babysit my girls, take them or pick them up from school, witness their naughtiness, or spoiling them with desserts. Honest images of the little time we get to spend with them, are the biggest help we get to make our kids feel connected to our extended family, despite the distance. Further more, I have a terrible memory and with no additional relatives to remember what they and we are like, photographs are also the most authentic record of our family life, right in each moment. The only testimony we as parents now have, and the kids will have when they grow up.

If I ever win the lottery, I will hire a chef and and a massage therapist to come with me everywhere I go. By everywhere I mean all the places we will go around the world. The thing is, I don't buy lottery tickets. I'm lucky to have so many blessings in my life and so, I just want to keep doing what I love most... photography. Don't tell everyone, but I'm willing to do it in exchange for such massages and food (just and FYI ;) .

Give me all the living room dance parties, home-made bread, summer evening walks, and hammock naps touching my daughters' hair.

I was born in Mexico (on a May 5th - no joke!) and immigrated to Canada with my husband 10 years ago. We continually seek to enrich our small village, aiming to form meaningful relationships with the multi-faceted people we share our path with. I'm fascinated by the diversity of cultures we get to know living here; it's like having all these little windows to the entire world that we can constantly peek into.

I dream of a world where my kids don't feel like they can only appreciate a face with make-up and photos with filters. A world in which perfect, doesn't mean flawless. I want them to search for beauty over prettiness, and to know that simple doesn't mean conformist.

Thank you if you've read this far into what can I say about me. There is a beautiful vulnerability in letting anyone step into your family life to record it. What I enjoy most is bearing witness of all that shines in human relationships, even when it appears to be hiding. I like to say that family documentary photography is the romanticization of a families' everyday life. Allow me to do that for yours.

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Image by Paula Gerein

Personal work helps me grow to better capture your family. Want to see what I've been up to?

@ofelia_photo

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