Sometimes a picture can feel like a crystal ball, revealing a truth you hadn't seen before. Maybe there's an experience you've been through but haven't been able to fully process or articulate yet. Maybe you think you're awkward, or you're not photogenic, or you're not enough x, or you're too y. What crap we talk about ourselves, and none of it's true! In our session I'll prove it to you.
've been doing this photography thing for over 13 years now; before that I grew up admiring my dad's professional portrait and travel images on our walls. I've been a photojournalist and photo editor and have been loving my Somerville studio since 2015. I take pride in creating images that cut the small talk and feel like a genuine connection with a vulnerable, badass person. (That's you.)
Your Boston Portrait Photographer
Camera bodies are awkward and obtrusive, the lenses large and unblinking. They can feel like medical machines out to analyze you and capture your flaws. Who hasn’t seen a photo of themselves, and thought “I look like that?!”
People are in motion. When we interact with others, we‘re not staring at their pores or the lines on their necks; we’re caught up in each other’s energy, the ideas they’re expressing. We’re looking into each other’s eyes.
I take a lot of images so that halfway through your session, the camera is no big deal at all. There’s no pressure to get everything perfect in this photo, because there will be others: images where you’re genuinely laughing, adjusting your clothing in a way that’s somehow elegant, or gazing head-on into the camera with a look that is vulnerable or defiant or just so you, that you’ll have a hard time deciding which ones to choose. That should be the most difficult part of your session.
’ve joked about renaming my business “Exposure Therapy” because everyone I photograph hates having their photo taken (this means you are a normal human being — phew; you passed the bot test).
My Approach to BEING YOUR portrait And headshot PhotographER
My work has been published in nearly all of my favorite places, and has been exhibited at the Inside Out Gallery, the Mpls Photo Center and The Soap Factory. I fulfilled a lifelong dream when my extensive portrait work with authors was discussed in the February 2021 issue of The Believer.
In 2017 I was voted one of the top 5 portrait photographers in WGBH’s Boston A-List. Until 2020, I was the Photo Director for the much beloved hyper-local news magazines Scout Somerville and Scout Cambridge (now defunct). I now freelance completely full-time out of my studio/the world and have as yet to photograph a boring person.
grew up writing, but it wasn't until college that I started taking photos to illustrate the essays I wrote. After a brief career in public radio, in 2010 I graduated from the photography department at The Salt Institute of Documentary Studies.
My Background As a Fine Art Portrait Photographer
IN FRONT OF MY LENS
Elizabeth Ames Staudt (The Other's Gold ) • Tamar Avishai (The Lonely Palette ) • Douglas Bauer (Dexterity ) • Lillian-Yvonne Bertram (But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise ) • Adam Conover (Adam Ruins Everything, The G Word, Bojack Horseman ) • Mark Cox (Barbells of the Gods ) • Josh Foman (Though We Bled Meticulously ) • Elisa Gabbert (The Word Pretty, The Unreality of Memory ) • Forte • Ira Glass (This American Life ) • Petey Gibson (The Sympathy Card, Broad City, Grace and Frankie ) • Jonathan Goldstein (Wiretap ) • Pagan Kennedy (New York Times ) • Marie Myung-Ok Lee (The Evening Hero ) • Kelly Link (White Cat Black Dog, Pretty Monsters ) • Rosemary Mosco (Bird and Moon ) • Randall Munroe (xkcd) • Sue Miller (Monogamy, While I Was Gone ) • David Rakoff (Fraud, Don't Get Too Comfortable, Half Empty ) • Clea Simon (To Conjure a Killer ) • David Sedaris (Naked, Me Talk Pretty One Day ) • Andrea Silenzi (Why Oh Why? ) • Tess Taylor (Work & Days, NPR's All Things Considered ) • Laura Zigman (Small World, Separation Anxiety )
IN FRONT OF MY LENS
I just want to gush one more time about how happy I am with the author photos you took last year at AWP. I can’t believe how many times I have had to look at them, publishing a book in a time when social media is even more intense than it was the last time I published a book, and I am still amazed you managed to make me look so good and also so myself and capture such a perfect mood - and how nicely they go with my book cover! I will use them forever! Thank you again!
AWP Conference in San Antonio, TX
Alden
Thank you SO MUCH for this incredible window into our lives. We've been away and wanted to wait until we were back in our space together with plenty of time to look these over. The photos actually made us cry they were so beautiful.
You are so skilled and so artistic, and we can't thank you enough for the time and care you put into this unusual project. Maybe in ten years we can do it again!
Cambridge Home Couples Session
Andrew & Amy
Adrianne,
The photos from the fashion show are just wonderful. I believe Jon put 8-10 of your photos on our new website in the main gallery, including the Uma Thurman sign with feather being the first of that slide show.
Thank you again and we will absolutely refer your amazing skill to anyone who asks.
NYC Fashion Week Documentation
United Staging
Thank you so much for being so easy to work with and for making me look like an author and younger than I am! Hope all is well with you. It would be wonderful if our paths crossed again someday.
Author Portrait Session, Kansas City
Martha grace
These are lovely and fantastic and I'm so glad to have had this (initial) opportunity to work with you. Thank you, Adrianne!
Studio Session, SOmerville
Phoebe
These are amazing!!! Thank you so much, Adrianne. You gave them just the kind of touches that make them look polished but not overdone. You are some kind of wizard! My hair will never look quite so good, but I will be forever grateful to have great bangs in this photograph.
Enough about my hair: what I appreciate most of all is that you captured me looking the way I feel, and in portraits that really convey those feelings. You have such a gift!
Anacortes, WA
Elizabeth
Studio Session, SOmerville
Thanks for being great to work with! Everyone is pumped about the photos and the whole experience was so easy. Glad we were able to connect.
Studio Group session, Somerville
Boston
Theological Institute
These are simply AMAZING! You are AMAZING!
We are so happy with them! Yay!!!!!!!
Cape cod Couples Session
Jocelyn & Ben
I will fully guide you on different wardrobe choices and looks, while also encouraging you to "bring that thing you always wear that just feels like you." Want professional hair & makeup services? Easy; I'll have them meet us at the studio. You'll have time for multiple outfit and backdrop changes, and we'll do onsite image review; I encourage you to be an active collaborator and co-discoverer in the awesomeness of your images!
Powerful • Intimate • True
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