(Photography by Tasha Marie)
Local Photographer Captures True Emotion Above All Else
If local photographer, designer and mother Tasha Marie is anything, she is fully authentic. Born and raised in California, Tasha has been interested in design her whole life. After spending some of her younger years in LA and traveling around, she decided to move closer to her parents in Washington, where she fell in love with the Pacific Northwest. “Everything there is absolutely stunning, and it’s where I got really into climbing,” Tasha said. “Climbing took me from one beautiful natural area to the next, and it got me exposed to so many cool areas.”
While getting into this new hobby, Tasha made sure to bring along an old one that she had been practicing since she was on her high school yearbook team: photography. “Especially up in Washington, it was so easy to just grab my camera gear, hop in my car and just drive out somewhere beautiful and remote,” she said. “I really enjoyed the spontaneity of it all, and I love looking back at all of the captured memories.”
To Tasha, photography is not her main career; she works full-time on the corporate side of Direct TV, and maintains that photography is her escape from the corporate world. Tasha’s drive for photography highlights an often overlooked way of expressing art in our modern, money-driven world; without the profit incentive affecting her work, she is fully free to be as creative and spontaneous in her art as she wants to be. In other words, her photography is truly an authentic representation of herself and her interests.
“I can appreciate all of the amazing photographers who do wedding photography, family portraits and things like that, but that’s just not something I would really want to do,” she said. “I really like travel and lifestyle photography, things that are a bit more candid and not as staged.”
Tasha and her family love to take road trips all over the place, and take photos at every stop they can, whenever it feels right. Her niche at the current moment? Her two-and-a-half-year-old son, who is learning so much about the world around him. Tasha says that she is grateful to be able to capture so many moments with him.
Her house, which lies on a few acres of property, borders the High Desert and provides some dramatic natural scenes. “I love getting out there with my son, because everything feels like a shot,” she said. “Some people ask me why I’m behind the camera and not capturing this moment with him, but to me it’s the opposite. I am there capturing the memory, the feel, and everything in that moment.”
Tasha added that capturing emotion in her photos makes her feel like she has “made it” as a photographer. “When you can feel the love, the intensity, the innocent excitement on a two-year-old’s face, that’s what it’s about.”
Capturing the real, authentic emotion in any moment is Tasha’s goal as a photographer, and helps explain why she avoids those well-known and rehearsed family portraits that, to her, feel unnatural. However, I’m sure anyone who has gotten sore cheeks from being told to smile for the perfect shot can at least somewhat agree with her view.
“I don’t like when my photos are staged, I prefer a much more natural aesthetic,” she said. “For the family shoots I have done, I always ask them to go on a walk or some activity that they are comfortable doing as a family so I can capture their real, authentic interactions.”
The search for authenticity explains why Tasha loves working with nature, and children: two subjects who will almost always be their authentic selves, whether they are asked to be or not.
The future for Tasha is up in the air, as she is expecting her second child. She is sure that she will keep capturing real moments with her family as they grow, and the potential to go professional is also on her mind. She has goals to monetize her photography one day, but for now, she is focused on capturing as many moments as she can with the people that she loves.