Laura Monfredini is a natural light portrait photographer.  Her work has been featured on Style Me Pretty, Grey Likes Weddings, Snippet & Ink, Classic Bride & Matchbook Magazine as eLLe PHOTOGRAPHY, which she founded in 2009.  In 2011, she was a featured contender in the Hey, Hot Shot competition sponsored by the Jen Bekman/20×200 Gallery in New York. Today, she specializes in photographing family portraits, social media and corporate headshots, intimate weddings, and elopements in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I fell in love with photography when I was about 10 years old.  My parents gave me a Kodak Instamatic for my birthday, which I promptly took to camp and everywhere else, burning through rolls and rolls of film, taking not so great pictures.  When I went to college, I finally got to learn how to make photos come alive.  I learned how to shoot and process film, and I spent days of my life editing photographs in the darkroom.  My style has always been focused on finding the in-between moments.  I like my images to capture real emotions and the essence of people, but always with an eye for composition and beauty.  I’m always trying to take that perfect snapshot – the one where the expressions make you want to linger just a little bit longer, and there’s something perfectly imperfect about the image.

If we work together, you’ll probably think that I’m a little bit quirky, a lot creative, and a lot of fun.  I see elegance in the everyday and in everyone.  I love all things pretty, fresh-cut flowers, happy people, classic novels, clean sheets, monograms, NPR and the New York Times, 1960s photography, technicolor, New Orleans, thank-you notes, fashion illustration, paper calendars, film, watercolor, and abstract art.  And I stay inspired by regularly visiting museums and watching old Hollywood movies.

In 2015, I married Mark Gabel, the love of my life, and good sport about having his photo taken whenever I ask (or at least most of the time).  We eloped at San Francisco City Hall, my favorite wedding venue of all time.