WELCOME!
I am Laurie - a designer, dreamer and artist.
Based in California’s San Francisco Bay Area, I love taking photos (and now, videos!) of people around me, and I'm always up for adventures around the world.
Before photography, I nurtured many other interests and career paths. I'd like to share some of these experiences to show how my experience, process and philosophies weave together to form my unique and valuable services for you.
BASED IN SF, CA - AVAILABLE TO TRAVEL
MONUMENT VALLEY
JANUARY 2010
My Formative Years
I have a constant urge to create. As an only child, my active, fanciful imagination led me to create castles and costumes, armed simply with a pad of paper, scissors and glue. My goal was to attain professional-level mastery of the arts (performing and visual), all crafted with artistic and technical ability.
I love the humanities, sciences and performing arts, and became a paid pianist by age 13. I ultimately decided to major in Mechanical Engineering at MIT because “it was the closest thing to arts and crafts”. I joyfully spent hours in the machine shop, and when I rolled into bed late at night, forgotten fasteners and tools would tumble out of my pockets.
At Stanford, I finessed my design sense (pre-d.school) with my MSME. My design education was epiphanic - I gained a holistic awareness of the world and established my core creative philosophies.
NEPAL
DECEMBER 2014
"DADDY SHADOW-MONSTER"
FEBRUARY 2020
Impact
My photographic style is deliberate yet embracing of serendipity, distilled and thoughtful.
I delight in manifesting uniquely character-defining details in a way that is natural and genuine.
My first notable accomplishment was my undergraduate thesis, an automotive rear-view mirror assembly redesign. It went into production in 2000, and can be found in most US-made automobiles made in 2001 and beyond.
The following years were spent in product design and management across industries including aerospace, mass-customized design, gaming, web search, mobile apps, and social networks. Some of my highlights include a design patent for a business card ejector (at Zazzle), rebranding Tencent's chat app Weixin into WeChat in 2012 (currently 1.2B users), and single-handedly organizing Facebook's first conference for Facebook Group leaders.
I proudly term myself industry-agnostic. My breadth of experience and empathetic relationship-building skills help me to connect with, deeply understand and manifest my clients’ goals and needs.
As a maker, I yearned to focus on tactile creative pursuits. After two decades of making products that “impact billions” and “change the world”, I was re-energized to shift to local community, nurturing personal connections and relationships.
Personal Manifesto
I am fulfilled by discovering and creating beauty. I value living a life rich in experience and full of emotion. An artist with an engineering framework, I am inspired to create at the junction of great design, intuitive application, and elegant aesthetics. Nothing gives me more joy than immersing myself fully in experiences, and I delight in small, nuanced details.
Bringing tangible form to abstract vision is my skill, as is my ability to inspire and be inspired by the people I interact with. Lastly, I deeply believe in the power of story-telling to honor legacy.
