I am so excited to be in Japan. It's been at the top of my bucket list for a long time now! So far, this beautiful, organized and super-polite country has NOT disappointed. (alternate headline: my matcha green tea obsession continues!)
Portraits by ANA on the road!
Ana is hitting the road this Spring, and has photo session availability in many cities around the world. It can be a commercial inquiry, a brand project, a family session, an event or a portrait! Email ana@anaphoto.co for more information, availability and rates.
Galway, Ireland
I visited many towns and counties in Ireland during my stay. Though I only had one day in Galway, it left a lasting impression on me. The charm of the streets and the friendliness of the shop owners impressed me. I learned about a progressive Swedish Illustrator and the slow fashion movement, not to mention that I stumbled upon some serious foodie delights!
Dawn hits the rainy streets of Galway.
With the help of my friend Cliodhna, I discovered a coffeeshop named Coffeewerk + Press! Such style within these doors. Shop owner Daniel humbly turns out a selection of goods that is as elevated style-wise as any cool-kid boutique in my Brooklyn neighborhood. I took forever picking through his collection of goodies. He supports artists all over the world! The coffee options at Coffeewerk are also certainly worth a mention. Take it from this coffee snob--you're in good hands here!
I knew I would love it just by looking at the logo and facade! Coffeewerk + Press, Galway, Ireland November 2015
Dan's coffeeshop is across the street from the sweetest toy shop called Wooden Heart, which is run by his parents! The family has been in Galway for many years, and both shops are beloved.
This is a sweet little book that I purchased over at the Wooden Heart, and then photographed at Coffeewerk + Press, because how beautiful are these tiles?
The author of this book, the much-loved Swedish author and illustrator Elsa Beskow, has quite a wonderful story of her own.
Elsa Beskow always loved fairy tales, and started telling stories even before she could speak properly. She told stories to her older brother Hans, who would help her find the right words and give suggestions on the plot.
Her upbringing was liberal and she was raised to stand up for her ideals. These values are reflected in her children's picture books. The Flowers' Festival, from 1914, argues for freedom of speech for everyone, and some suggest that Mrs Chestnut, in her loose-fitting dress, is depicted as pregnant - a daring thing to do at a time when the middle classes were of the view that pregnant women should be kept out of sight.
Elsa Beskow's aunts and uncle had progressive views of parenting and education, and they began a school where children learned through games and enjoyment and with focus on understanding what they studied.
How wonderful that such a talented artist was also one of the original believers of what we call play-based learning today! I'm fascinated by her. Read more about her here, or get one of her books for yourself and see what I mean!
A table at Ard Bia, where brunch is a whole new version of wonderful. An empty table is rare! I snapped this in the five seconds after it was cleaned before the new eager patrons were seated.
There is SO MUCH talent in this town.
The hottest table in Galway is certainly Ard Bia, whether for lunch or dinner. The things coming out of this kitchen were absolutely fantastic. I wish I had more photos of the dinner I had (I ate there twice in 24 hours!) but sadly they were eaten too quickly to be photographed.
Ard Bia owner Aoibheann is also a partner in the Tweed Project, and I couldn't resist buying their beautiful shawl! The Tweed Project creates handmade, one off pieces that combine beautiful Irish fabrics with modern tailoring for a truly authentic expression of Irish design. Their aesthetic and their website is really wonderful, I highly recommend clicking over.
Galway is a special place, and not just because it's so photogenic. (The photographer's bias!) My experience there played a huge role in how much I came away from Ireland absolutely in love with all things Irish!
Weddings by Ana
One of my New Year's resolutions is to re-do my website! (The never-ending un-finish-able task, am I right, artists and entrepreneurs?) Nevertheless, I began that process last month in January, and I took my wedding gallery down off the website while I tinker.
As I go, I'm uncovering all kinds of beautiful memories of my glowing brides and grooms, and they deserve to see the light of day, er--lights of the internet! So while tinkering continues, I'm posting some images here that I am particularly fond of.
Location: Tappan Hill Mansion
Black and white images are often heart-stoppers like no other.
Other times, only color will do.
dress by Marchesa Bridal, dress shot on location at El Encanto in Santa Barbara, CA
Shot on location at Atwood Ranch in Sonoma, CA
El Encanto, Santa Barbara, planned by Tara Bassi
Sea Cliff Manor, Long Island, New York
Manhattan
NYC taxi
But before all the legal stuff begins... it's fun to be engaged!
Bryant Park, New York City
Central Park, New York City
Central Park, New York City
Central Park, New York City
for love of coffee
It's day five, no coffee. Sweet-ish and caramel-tinged, frothy and dessert-like. Oh, java. (sigh) I miss you.
We were so good together.
I decided that my 4-cup per day habit was out of hand when I started having trouble sleeping. This has happened before. The last time it happened, I just went a few days without coffee at all, and my symptoms of lethargy-yet-sleeplessness disappeared! For a whole year, almost! But now they're back, and on Monday of this week, I embarked on 7 days without having any coffee at all.
Day Five. (whimper)
Ninth Street Espresso mugs, great diner shape.
I was trolling the archives for the 5 million shoots I'm behind on blogging, and the first one that came to mind was when I shot with Joe Speicher of Ground to Grounds at Ninth Street Espresso earlier this year.
Ground to Grounds is a must-click if you're a coffee nerd like me. It's an online publication about the world of coffee. From farm to cup, and everything in between. Their Instagram feed is a love note to my favorite bean, and their site always has profiles of cool coffee shops across the country. After our visit, Joe put together this cool post featuring our afternoon getting to know Ninth Street Espresso General Manager Trey Wrage. He used to live in my hometown, Santa Cruz, CA!
Ninth Street Espresso has been a favorite of mine for a sweet tiny cup of espresso ever since I discovered them when I worked near their outpost in Chelsea Market. This time, I got to tour two other locations!
Drool with me? Better yet, go have a cup of coffee for me. I have to last until Monday.
happy place.
p.s. On Day 1 and 2 of a coffee-free existence, the difficulty was pretty much all mental. I just WANTED it, because it looks and tastes like sweet, sweet heaven. But I didn't have a crazy headache, and I did have more energy, weirdly. On Day 5, I'm just getting downright nostalgic for the old days. Like, last-Sunday old. I think all this sleep I'm getting is getting to my head. Everything will feel normal come Monday, when I am back to my awesomely jittery self. COFFEE!
july 4th
I spent July 4th in Cape Cod! A house full of friends.
Woods Hole, MA
It was like summer camp for adults. Every day we flip-flopped down to the sandy shore to sunbathe (with 50 SPF, you see, we are 1% more responsible now that we're 30-something...) and to swim out to the floating dock. Our 7-year-old co-camper would call out crazy words, instructing us on exactly what to say in the air as we jumped off. "HAIRBRUSH!$^#*!!!"
And, there was lobster. My brain categorizes lobster under (!!!!!!!)
It was vacationus maximus. And it's on repeat, in my mind, during work this week.
they make a cool sound, too
Barbados
New York, what gives? One day, 61 degrees and balmy, the next 18 degrees plus wind chill. It's time to take matters into my own hands. Here's a long-overdue post from my recent winter-escape to Barbados... may these photos and memories coax the sun goddesses and breeze-bringing spirits out of hiding and back to New York, New York... Please. (Please!)
Barbados
My lovely sea swim partner, we had a moment, we communed...
Sunning
In Barbados, when we weren't on or looking for the main highway, called the ABC, (which, hilariously, was almost entirely unmarked, by letters, signs or otherwise) we were lying on our empty beach, kayaking, grilling fresh meals at home, exploring the local beer with our neighbors or swimming with the sea turtles, our sea-based neighbors.
A group of five friends, spending time meeting new friends. And all to celebrate the one and only Sarah's birthday! Sarah my love, may we all have many more times around the sun, and may most of yours be by my side.
The view from the house
Daydreaming of Cambodia: Asia, Part 1
The view towards Old Town, Siem Reap, Cambodia, April 2013
Of all the places I go when my mind drifts, when it puts itself on 'sleep', when I'm just numb and dumb and moving slow, or in fact checked out completely, with a tingling bum from too many photoshop hours in this chair, I go, I go, I happily go, to the far off places I've been.
In the spring of 2013, I went on a trip to Southeast Asia for six weeks. I went alone. I went to meet and shoot and wander, and to be both completely off the grid and completely on, as I ignored every single email but posted hundreds of photos on Instagram, photos that just flowed out directly from a moment I'd just had, alone but never alone. Solo on the wandering path I'd created for myself. Buoyed by the heart-ing of the images from friends back home. Surprised at myself as I strode confidently into each new day of unknowns.
Everything was new, and I was humbled. Alone but not alone, I was electrified by the indelible faces I was meeting. Western faces and Eastern faces, and everything in between. Faces that surprised and astonished and tickled me, ones that hugged me and scared me and made me cry, ones that had the same mission as I as a wanderer, and ones that had lives so different I was rendered speechless.
Banteay Samre temple, Siem Reap, Cambodia, April 2013
I wasn't supposed to be there, I knew, not really. I "shouldn't" have gone at all. My heart was still broken from a break-up a few months back, a five year chapter that snapped closed with a whooshing devastation, knocking the wind out of me for six whole months. My gut ached with loss and loneliness, as my best friends floated down aisles and into delivery rooms.
Though I felt I should have rebounded more quickly, my sadness made me listless in business. As any business owner knows, dropping the ball for a day can be terrible, but watching the ball slowly roll away from you, week after week, without making the slightest effort to chase it leads to epic loss. My photography business was hanging by a teardrop. My contracted deadlines, my financial obligations and my guilty conscience for even considering such a long time away all narrowed their eyes into a slit, in unison, in warning. "You can't afford it, and you don't deserve it."
Well.
I've seen that movie, so to speak, and it sucked. I'm no longer gullible enough to believe the curious put-downs my brain generates when it's searching for an answer.
I just go out looking.
For the answer.
Because to know what's behind the curtain of my need to wander, is an answer I deserve.
Siem Reap, Cambodia with Beyond Unique Escapes
I calmly considered all the obvious logic that might have prevented me from buying the one-way ticket, but something kept pushing me towards this adventure. I knew if I wanted to get my business back on track, I needed to spend some serious time alone with my thoughts.
Though it would be far from my first solo trip to a far-flung place, it was different than the others. I was listening closely, for once, to the echoes of history, as well as to the people I met. Less of the hair-tossing yoga girl I was in India at 25 (though I love her, too) and more the family-lore-loving listener, aiming to just connect with other humans. Alone but not alone.
Part of me leaving like this, with so much in flux, felt bratty. It was indignant and solipsistic. It was saying, "Of all the things I want in life but that are out of my reach, (aisles, delivery rooms, firework-crusted career success, endless world travel) world travel is the one that I can grasp for myself. Right now."
But questionable motives aside, I also knew that travel heals you, in its own way. To be lost and dirty, to be hungry and queasy and to be language-dumb, means to soon after be cared for, welcomed in, shared with, fed til you're stuffed to the gills and your eyes are crinkly from laughter.
Spicy Papaya Salad at the Golden Butterfly Villa, Siem Reap, Cambodia, April 2013
To hear secrets, to rock baby sisters, and to make papaya salad. To shuffle awkwardly to new music, feet still thumping with new rhythms long after you've lowered your lids. To bear witness to the lives and stories and tragedies of others, unsure of how you could have possibly continued existing, across the world at home, and still be breathing, had you not followed your fate here to this place.
Ultimately, the ground sang. The faces roared. The shape of those moments will be detailed in future posts, and I can't wait to set them free with words, they shouldn't live only in my head.
The whole country of Cambodia imprinted me with hope and renewal, a country that has been through so much, but who in 2013 had so much pride on their faces and love on their lips.
And then.
I returned home. My bills and my mistakes were all still there, and (surprise!) they were compounded into even more nightmarishly twisted versions of the messes that I left. My trip didn't "solve" anything, not that I thought it would. I patched and apologized and saved money, I was honest and earnest and direct with clients. I wasn't afraid to ask for help from my friends, my family and my community. I am still in business, thriving even, and I am smiling.
And what fun, I think now, to finally be writing about this trip, nine full months after returning. What a thrill to have finally given myself permission to let these memories blossom. Much more to come soon from this trip! This is absolutely only the beginning.
“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.”
NOTE: All photos here were taken with my beloved Fuji X-E1, which proved itself brilliantly as the off-duty photographer's right-hand man. I was too busy soul-healing and temple-traversing and existing outside of my norm to be using the camera I use for work (I didn't even bring it). This is the camera I reach for when I set out to just... be.
Truckee
Checked out in the mind, tucked in by the fire... The cabin days in Truckee were the best blend of relaxation and... sleeping? Those two things are different, right?
Truckee, CA 2013
Being chased by a killer remote-control helicopter while trying to cook a five-star Christmas meal...
“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.”
Truckee Jax Diner
The food at the Jax on the Tracks Diner is absolutely divine, and with service that is unbelievably fast and friendly considering how busy they are.
And the vintage snowshoes on Linda's wall make me yearn to try snowshoe-ing! Look, Kaufmann Mercantile has these swanky versions available... would I dare?
I'm sure my mom would document that train wreck, (I mean, totally competent adventure!)
Friendsgiving
It's helpful to figure out what you're thankful for. To have an excuse to take stock of your lot, to sit back and consider carefully what you have around you that is awesome. It's helpful for perspective, to feel less blegh-y about the things you might otherwise complain about, and it's helpful to be appreciative of the smaller (more concentrated?) great things in your world that you might often ignore.
Helpful because a little meditation on your good fortune can make your smile softer, and more permanent. It can make you stand taller when you stand up for what you believe in.
Gathering Ingredients for Stuffing
For me, besides making and enjoying food (which I love-love!) the whole entire meaty-whole pervasive amazingness of my life is the people I love dearly. They are numerous and they are wild and they fill my home and fill my life with such an intense warm glow that it more than overflows my cup of wants. I had a lot of these faces around me last week for our Friendsgiving in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and I couldn't be more thankful if I tried. Bottoms up, family!
Love,
Ana (aka Schecky)
VIDEO: The toast just before the feast!
Home
A nice amount (a perfect amount, in fact!) of time has passed while I was gone.
It's been long enough that American currency is weird-looking. Long enough that the street traffic seems out of place without the roar of a thousand motos. Long enough that I still have the bright-eyed half smile on my face.
My smile threatens to erupt, at the slightest prompt. I'm still looking at everything with a traveler's eager, observant affinity, where every corner storefront merits a second look, where every interesting face passed is noted and memorized with excited inner appreciation.
I'm still in the habit of being rather disconnected. I'm only checking my phone every couple of hours. I expect that bit of loveliness will be the first habit to evaporate, but I hope it doesn't happen today.
I awoke at 3 am today, full of thoughts and done with sleep, despite my valiant efforts at avoiding jet lag. I awoke and I watched this video, of kayaking on Halong Bay, Vietnam, and was tickled at the memory. Reliving this trip is going to be a riot, without a trace of the sad longing that remembering can sometimes bring.
One more watch, and then I'll get back to sleep. Really.
For the birds
In Hanoi, you bring your pet bird to the park with you so that she can chirp the latest gossip with the other birds. Though a caged bird is sad in a way, this is a sweet ritual that I was surprised by and loved. Hanoi, Vietnam.
An open letter: Saigon
Dear Mama,
I parked my pillow in Saigon last night. I woke up feeling alive.
It is such a thrill to disappear. To vanish off of the map of my daily routine, to vanish into the crowded lanes of a new city.
Saigon breathes impatiently for me to get to know her. She emits the rumble of a thousand motos and the smell of almost-ready French bread. Tree-lined avenues and grins on faces.
Endless ways to spend the sticky-hot afternoons, searching out a breeze or a game of Chinese checkers. You lay in a hammock. you gossip in a park.
Endless ways of using coconut and condensed milk. I love a city that loves their desserts.
I'm out of doors and out on my own and out in search of today's adventure.
I'll report back again soon.
Love,
Ana
The color of sunset
Okay, granted this is an Instagram photo, but the truth remains that the color the sun splashes as it sets over Angkor Wat, is, undeniably... Epic.
Mystically tangerine-orange-pink.
This is a day I won't soon be willing to leave. I won't stop wanting to replay it on loop, in my daydreams. And in the moments before sleep comes.
Travel: Free
Free... From understanding exactly what's in your food. Bah. I'm sure there's no additives in there! In Kep, Cambodia, today, I sure wolfed down my grilled fresh crab and veggies, drizzled with this mystery hot sauce.
Bear Mountain
The air just smells different here. In the BEST way.
Fallbrook, CA
What a lovely, wine-country-looking, napa-like town, just halfway between San Diego and Temecula! Saw some fun desert-y California flora and fauna that was new to my eyeballs... <3 
Around the Vineyard!
Sweet summer! Ahhhh, toes in the cool, clear water... strolls on the bluff with ice cream in hand and a best friend in tow--these are my favorite parts of summer, and NOBODY does Summer like Martha and her Vineyard. Rachael and I SO enjoyed our frolic around this amazing island! 
<3
Ode to St. Martin
I woke up this morning after a lovely sleep-in, and though I felt happy, I found myself lacking in something important... what is it... OH YEAH. A beach! I miss the sun. I miss the sand. And although I'd take pretty much any beach at this point, I'd REALLY love to be on the beach on the island of St. Martin! Here's a little photo meditation I did this morning with some of the shells I brought back from St. Martin... grab a Mai Tai and enjoy!
