This year was our first Mother's Day Celebration with our baby so I took a portrait in Elysian Park with my baby, husband, in-laws and our friends who were also celebrating their first with their 8-month old baby. It is difficult to get babies to cooperate during a photo session, as you can see above. We shot some other photos throughout the day that will commemorate the occasion. 

This is a portrait photographed on Saturday of little baby Gabriel. He found it funny when his parents coughed so they kept coughing throughout the photo shoot. Getting and keeping a baby's attention during photo sessions is always tricky. We do our best though and always have success by the end of the shoot. Happy Mother's Day to all of hard working mothers out there! May you stay strong and always feel appreciated :)

Windmills Windmills in Palm Springs, California. There is something liberating and utterly beautiful about large expanses of land, especially when they are being use to renew the earth. I am a strong proponent of renewable energy and try my best to do what I can to reuse, renew and recycle in my life. Now I am hoping to pass those same values to my daughter. Mother earth really needs us right now, she needs us to be smart and stop using fossil fuels and abusing the one place we have to live. The time is now and I think powerful images of nature in all of its splendor will help reiterate this idea of a clean earth. 

This photograph is from a collection of windmills in Palm Springs, California, about 1.5 hours East of Los Angeles. Los Angeles is in deep need of repair and totally dependent on automobiles at the moment. Times can change quickly though and expanding public transit and bullet trains will help us protect the environment because we will be using less fossil fuel.

Joshua TreeThe sun shines behind a Joshua Tree at Joshua Tree National Park about 2 hours East of Los Angeles. I went to Joshua Tree National Park with family and friends recently.  It was our first time visiting and we will definitely be back. The park is vast and filled with may odd spectacles. We had the most fun around the large stones in the area "Jumbo Rock". The photo above is of a Joshua Tree photographed at Jumbo Rock. The sun shines behind the Joshua Tree.

Cholla Plant at Joshua Tree National Park.An alien like cholla cactus. Above is a cholla cactus. They are very dangerous! A cholla ended up on my shoe and rubbed against my calf, a bunch of cactus needles got stuck in my leg. I had to pick them out one by one. I bled a little and was more careful walking amongst the cacti after that!

My friend Felicia and her daughter are pictured here in the middle of the frame, tiny on the Jumbo Rocks. I love how this shot shows the scale of the Jumbo Rocks. The blue sky and yellow brown rocks create a nice contrast also.

To view more photos from the adventure visit: http://www.naheedence.com/joshuatree (Please excuse the dust, I didn't have time to retouch the photos on account of having a 6.5 month old!)

It has been a few years since I last visited the desert, the photo above is from Zabriskie Point in Death Valley, California. I will be heading to Joshua Tree with mi familia at the end of March and am beyond excited for the adventure that awaits. It will be our first time visiting Joshua Tree and I am looking forward to being in nature and getting back to my humanity away from computers and phones, of course I will have my camera and several lenses! Stay tuned for some amazing photos from California and from Joshua Tree Park.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of ways to photograph one subject. Will they all be great photographs is the question. When I photograph events this especially comes into play because often times once you photograph the same people in the same room for a long period of time you have to push yourself to come up with a new perspective, especially if you are hired for another 4 hours! There are so many factors to consider when taking a photograph. In these four photos I took two photos of the same subject to show how different a subject can look depending on the way it is photographed. 

In the first two shots here at LACMA, Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art, Chris Burden's Urban Light is photographed using a 16mm lens with two entirely different perspectives. In the vertical shot the lamps are distorted and the shadows create an interesting continuation from the ground up. The palm trees add drama and the blue sky adds beauty and depth, a strong gradient.

The second shot is less abstract but still dramatic with the use of sun flare behind the lamps. The lamps are still mysterious and compete with the palmtrees. It was also shot with the same 16mm lens and includes a rich Los Angeles deep blue cloudless sky.

The second pair of photos are of Tony Smith's sculpture, Smoke, also at LACMA. Here the difference is less dramatic but shows how moving over a few inches totally changes the perspective of the sculpture. Also take note of how the people in the photos add to the photo or take away the attention of your eye from the sculpture depending on their placement.

science center los angelesThe entrance to the Science Center in Downtown Los Angeles.

I have a deep appreciation for architecture. I love to use my photography and explore the way lines curve and meet each other and the way the light shines on the surrounding surfaces. I am always exploring new places and love photographing a space after visiting a few different occasions to compare how the light changes the apparent lines of a space. I love the way the light is displayed off of the wall and how blue the window is during this shot at The Los Angeles Science Center. The photo was taken around 4:30 PM, not far from sundown in the "winter" here where the sunsets around 5:30.

Angeles National ForestPhotos of Angeles National Forest in Aracdia, California. Photos by Naheed Choudhry.

This past weekend Dex (my husband and techno guru) and I met with local artists in our area thanks to the Nextdoor App. The meeting was about starting a collective in our area of Los Angeles, our zip code is 90032. Artists from El Sereno, Rose Hills, South Pasadena and other Northeast Los Angeles neighborhoods came and shared their ideas. The artists represented a vast array of talent including: Illustration, writing, music production and photography. We are excited to work on projects with local artists and are imagining all of the possibilities. During our first meeting we came up with the name: Coyote Rose Artist Collective.

Coyote Rose Artist Collective is in the process of getting a permit to hold a festival and art show in El Sereno/Rose Hills. We hope to be a thriving group bringing even more creative perspective to the NELA Art Walk and beyond. The group has a facebook page where you can checkout the latest info regarding the artists, festival/show.

Dex is a Los Angeles native and we both moved here from NYC in 2012. We lived in Echo Park near downtown LA but as rent prices kept going up we decided we wanted to buy a house before we were priced out of yet another neighborhood. Now we are homeowners and live 3 miles from downtown LA in El Sereno. We are looking forward to creating a community of artists near us who will motivate us to be even more creative and keep us inspired.

Photos in this post are from Ernest Debs Park in El Sereno. The entrance is from Monterey Road in Northeast Los Angeles.

It's been one year since my entire family traveled to Pakistan to witness the wedding of one of my brothers. The time has flown by and I found out I was pregnant just before the trip. The trip was as good as it gets. I met amazing people who inspired me to be a better person and I saw one of my three brothers get married to a lovely young lady. Two of my cousins also got married while we were there.

We traveled to the capital, Islamabad, for a day of sightseeing and I loved the architecture and the exciting pace of the town. 

I hope my brother and his wife live as happily as my husband of 11 years and I have! May they support each other and make each other better people. When I look at the photos I get the traveling bug, luckily for me I live in California so I can be in a different environment and feel like I am in a different world within one hour of traveling any direction!