Love isn’t boring.
Why should your photos be?

Your once-in-a-lifetime celebration deserves to be experienced over and over again.

Welcome to our all-women photography trio based in Santa Barbara. Serving the west coast and the world.

Meet Your Team

With 21 years of combined experience capturing celebrations across the globe, our all-women team is here to make sure you have the best day of your life and the photos to reflect that.

Meet Our Why

A single, precious photo of our studio owner & principal photographer’s aunt on her wedding day in the early 1900s sparked a love for capturing the start of a legacy.

The Latest

Praise

"You have done us an incredible service. The joy I just saw on my wife’s face (the most beautiful woman in the world, who rarely feels that way when she looks at pictures of herself) is worth more to me than anything this world could possibly offer. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You are incredibly good at what you do. "

“Sarah has a radiant energy that invites an immense degree of comfort. She took the time to get to us and when our wedding day rolled around, we felt SO comfortable with her.”

“Having Sarah with us on my wedding day felt like having another friend there who had our back. She kept us calm, relaxed, assured, and most importantly, made us laugh every step of the way.”

@sarahellefson

8 Facts About Me. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ 1. I

8 Facts About Me.
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1. I believe Tyler Cameron dated farther up the social celeb ladder than Wells Adams in Bachelor Nation. (You can’t think about this emotionally, it must be an argument of pure reason factoring in everything about who they have dated. (Net worth, elitism, social circle, famous family members, and golden ratio of shin to thigh bone, etc.)
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2. Both my husband and I thought we’d become lawyers at various points growing up. Neither one of us pursued that and now we just channel that internal sense of justice into disagreeing about point #1.
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3. How do people come up with 8 things?
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Photo by the lovely @haley.garces . Baby by me. Earrings by @shopcarmenandco ✨✨

When it doubt, put a peach on it. #lifelessons ⠀

When it doubt, put a peach on it. #lifelessons
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There’s a story to be told behind every wedding and when I have the chance to style an invite for a photo, I love to tell snippets of that story in the little trinkets I include. 💫
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All credit for this concept goes to Lady Mary Montagu, an English socialite and courtier who is most widely known for bringing the concept of the smallpox vaccine (👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼) to Western society after observing it in Turkey. When she wasn’t casually saving lives, Lady Mary loved to stir up a ‘lil intrigue by sending friends coded messages in flowers and gems. Love me some drama, honestly would have done the same because court must have been boring on occasion, right?🔥
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In this scene, the miniature seashells represent a destination wedding in California but the peach and vintage airplane opener show that it was hastily moved to Georgia. The spread fan was a gift to each guest attending, helping everyone beat the summer heat. All the florals included are the wedding colors, showing off the palette to those who couldn’t attend! 🤍
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It’s the miniature seashells for me though, like a little visual treasure hunt. 😍

Let’s normalize posting when baby daddy is a sna

Let’s normalize posting when baby daddy is a snack and you are also so close to having a spicy margarita again.🍾⁣⁣⁣⁣
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P.S. You know you’re pregnant when... Typing the word snack makes you hungry. ⁣(Who are we kidding tho, this is me always. Pregnancy just emboldened me to demand ridiculous snacks at all hours.😂)⁣
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How to take a chunk of time off and have peace wit

How to take a chunk of time off and have peace with your income as an artist. ✨ (Post 2/2)
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BTS how I’ve prepped for time off:
✨ I receive commissions (a.k.a. passive earned paychecks) from various stockists and galleries who use my work in their stores. Some payments are monthly, some are quarterly! I also receive a payout for any work sold directly from my print shop. For each, an automated chunk of that check was put in a separate saving account for 6 months so I could pay myself out when I decided to take time off. (@qapital does this for you, just set and forget. So amazing.)
✨ Any little extra money that came in outside of regular income event-based streams, I also threw in as I could. Little by little, it adds up! Because it was *extra*, I didn't even miss it and wasn't tempted to spend it.
✨ I've thought ahead to business expenses that will happen while I'm *out*. Recurring subscriptions I can't cancel (like client gallery hosting), contractors who serve my business (@inlineaaccounting does our books and @chanelandlee does operations support), any upcoming team member payments for event work. All of it will be covered by the continued earnings of my print shop, I'll just shift that income into paying expenses vs. saving. So simple. So much peace of mind.
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Honestly? I just wish I had hopped on this train sooner. My hope is to keep up this habit so I can fund a longggg staycation or adventure every year for us. My husband and I both work so hard, now that we are growing our family I'm just starting to realize how much time FLIES. A little planning ahead is going to create so many beautiful memories!
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If you are dying to start a print shop, I'll be relaunching Pathway to Profitable Prints next week and the waitlist is in my bio! Hop on for info.💡
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Dream along with me today, if you had three months off and knew your income wasn't going anywhere, what would you do? ✨

How to take a chunk of time off and have peace wit

How to take a chunk of time off and have peace with your income as an artist. ✨ (Post 1/2)
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It doesn't have to be growing your family, you could be itching for a multi-month Bali sabbatical when this craziness is over (okay, who ISN'T here for that), a meandering road trip where wi-fi is non-existent, or setting yourself up for some scheduling freedom. Here's the deal, this just shouldn't be a pipe dream for us entrepreneurs. If it is, why in the world do we do WHAT we do?! (Aside from the fact that we love it and are slaves to our art, could literally never do anything else, I KNOW.)
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There are 100% seasons of hustle when you build a business but if you let that mentality stay in the driver's seat, hello burnout. Here's my recipe for creating 3 mos. of financial freedom.
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📔BUILD UP FINANCIAL KNOWLEDGE: If you are caught in the trap of paying yourself out randomly with client payments and haven't set yourself up with regular income, your homework is reading Profit First.
💡TIP: Implement each step AS you read so you don't get overwhelmed at the end with a bunch of tasks. @qapital is a wonderful tool for making the process super easy, too! Well worth the subscription to get you on a good track.
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🖼BUILD A PRINT SHOP: Make hay while the sun shines, the whole world is spending WAY more time staring at their walls and redecorating in this season, they need your art. Seriously. For photographers (and artists in general), we can get caught up in pushing our service-based business as far as it can go, totally forgetting that the art we have already created holds such deep potential for passive income.
💡TIP: Focus on ways to expand your marketing reach by partnering with stockists and galleries who have an actual advertising budget to get your work seen. If no one is seeing it, no one is buying it. (Let that motivating, not tragic. 🤍)
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CONT’D IN NEXT POST (photo by the always amazing @haley.garces )

My favorite 2020 story still gives me goosebumps i

My favorite 2020 story still gives me goosebumps in the best way.💫⁣
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We decided to take these photos on the same beach we got engaged, on of our fave coastal spots. The first time I swam there last summer RIGHT after I found out I was pregnant, the most incredible pod of dolphins appeared and swam along the break with me for almost an hour. It was seriously this little gift that the next chapter of life was going to be such an incredible experience. 🤍⁣
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The evening we took these, another pod of dolphins appeared and swam alongside us as we walked down the beach. It was UNREAL. Thinking back, it just sends shivers up my spine at how beautiful these moments were in such a dark and chaotic year. ✨⁣
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There’s so many aspects of life I can’t wait for our daughter to experience for the first time but the one I keep coming back to is dipping her toes in the ocean for the first time in 2021.🥰⁣
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I am typically the unluckiest person with dolphin sightings, and so this was honestly extra amazing. Do you guys have any wild “sign” stories?! I can count mine on half a hand, I get so excited hearing them from friends! 😍⁣
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P.S. So, so grateful to Haley for capturing these photos, she makes photos such an easy and downright FUN experience, I’m so grateful to have her on our team.💫⁣
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P.P.S. This dress has been a staple over the past 6 months and it’s a regular dress from Amazon, of all places! I’ve accumulated maternity/non-bump capsule wardrobe I truly love and I’m going to share it after I pull together all the links this weekend. 🤍

Our new website is launching Tuesday! ✨Bright th

Our new website is launching Tuesday! ✨Bright things coming in 2021 ✨
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If you're recently engaged and looking to start planning over the weekend, email hello@sarahellefson.com or slide into my DMs for info ASAP. 🎉
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Happy New Year, everyone!

First photos as a family of three in the spot wher

First photos as a family of three in the spot where we got engaged 10 years ago?! WILD. iPhone snap by our favorite camera wizard @haley.garces 🤍