Hawaii is so hard to leave! 🌿 What a glorious short vacation in Maui (thanks @fairmontkealani!) and the Big Island with @nickvisconti swimming with turtles, sipping mai tais out of pineapples, cheering on elite Ironman athletes, and getting some amazing QT together before the next crazy season of life hits. Love making memories with you ♥️🌅 #alwayskealani #fairmontmoments
Mahalo Hawaii! Until we meet again 🤙🏼 #forcedvacation
Today is #WorldSightDay, an important day for me and millions of other blind and vision impaired people around the world. I’m so pumped to see brands like @herbalessences embrace inclusivity and create products that are friendlier for the blind — these shampoo and conditioner bottles have subtle etchings on the back, so people who can’t see in the shower can differentiate which is which. SO AWESOME. Link in bio for an update with where I’m at with my condition #retinitispigmentosa, and to hear more about what Herbal Essences is doing in this space. Lastly, if you are blind or vision impaired or know someone who is, check out @bemyeyesapp today — Herbal Essences has trained people on call ready to answer your personal haircare questions! 🌿 #sponsored #herbalessences
When your business partner forces you to take a little vacation. Thanks @bradfarmer! 😏 @nickvisconti & I made it to @fairmontkealani in Maui yesterday, AKA my favorite place in the world. Feeling grateful and loving life. Two mai tais, please! 🌴🍹 #alwayskealani #fairmontmoments
Reason #29472 why I love California. Other states, take notes. 📷: @rylander_west
So excited to finally be sharing photos of our new Lindal Cedar Mountain Home interior, now up on the blog (link in bio)! I also shared some background on purchasing the home, and how I’m learning to embrace the word blessing ♥️
Since moving into our new home in July, I’ve spent a ton of time exploring the trails around Glenshire 🌾 There’s something pretty magical about being able to wander out your front door and have instant trail access! ⠀ I wrote a blog post about our recent move and why it was so important to us — link in bio 👏🏼 A second blog post is coming in a few days with a photo tour of the interior... can’t wait to show you. Thank you to my friends at @merrell for the perfect housewarming gift — always love my @zappos finds! These are the Roam Mid Boots 😍 #sponsored #MerrellOutside #CreateYourTrail #Merrell #GotItOnZappos
Mid trail run views 👀 ⠀ Tahoe is full of endless trail access, but this one might be my new favorite. I love the Flume Trail for similar reasons, but the Rubicon literally hugs the water! 💦 We started at D.L. Bliss State Park (well worth the $10 parking fee) and jaunted our way towards Emerald Bay. I only ran about 5 miles this time (800’ elevation gain is no joke) but next time I want to do the whole thing. Who’s in?!
Where dinosaurs roam 🦖 ⠀ The Big Island of Hawai’i has one of the world’s four green sand beaches, twelve distinct climate zones, the tallest mountain in the world, active volcanos, and is the newest + biggest of the Hawaiian islands (and continually growing bigger, at an average of 42 acres per year). I typically stay on the Kona side, so it was such a treat to see the lush + tropical Hilo side from the air last year! 🚁
The place that redefined what “home” meant. ⠀ Tahoe is a wild place: a juxtaposition of ski bums forever chasing the powder, and billionaires who arrive on private jets and scurry off to private lakeside cabin-mansions. Locals complain about tourists; tourists complain about tourists. It’s not the easiest place to make a living, but it’s the only place I want to live. There’s just something about this blue lake and the endless adventures surrounding it that has me bewitched. Shot on @sonyalpha: a7R III | 25mm | f/8 | ISO 500 | 1/400 sec #sonyalpha #alphacollective #bealpha
I have a confession to make: I don’t really like social media all that much. ⠀ When I joined Instagram almost a decade ago, I was in my mid-twenties, living with my parents in the Bay Area, newly diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa and trying to wrap my mind around what it meant to be an artist going blind. Having lost the ability to drive, I would take BART into San Francisco every day I wasn’t working my job at a local optometry office where I constantly heard people complain about how “blind” they were without their glasses. I had never owned a camera before, but my iPhone captured my world: I shot photos of my day-to-day life like everyone else, but somehow, my images began to gain traction and I became one of the very first people on this app to be a Suggested User and thus develop a “following” — it was the days of chronological order, long before algorithms and sponsored posts. Instagram was truly about community. I met some of my best friends through this app — exploring Land’s End with photographers far more talented than I was more healing to my soul than any therapy session I’ve ever attended. Those days, social media was social. And it was fun. ⠀ Today, I certainly acknowledge the significant role social media has played in my personal and professional life — landing travel and career opportunities beyond my wildest dreams — and I am grateful for it. You have no idea what it meant for me to work with @ford to be among the first in the world to photograph the release of the 2015 Ford Mustang in Shanghai, or practice yoga with @yogagirl in Aruba with one of my favorite skincare brands @lovephilosophy, or launch my own creative agency @geographycreative two years ago where today I work with global brands on social + creative projects, like this trip to Banff last Fall with @dell + @nauclothing. The list goes on and on. Social media isn’t going anywhere, and I am grateful to have been a part of the evolution of this app. ⠀ But I have to admit, I don’t know that I like it that much anymore. The “perfect” posed and edited photos, the algorithms, the endless conversations with fellow influencers about how to stay relevant. [continued in comments]
Last night in the roastery. Calling back to a simpler time on Instagram: a quick iPhone snap with a quick iPhone edit to document a real moment. This is our baby. I’m trying to put into words what this photo means to me and utterly failing — just know that my husband can often be found here late at night packaging coffee and sweeping floors, long after everyone else has gone home. Nobody works harder than @nickvisconti, and as a friend reminded us yesterday, if anyone were to make a coffee brand work in an already saturated market... it would be Nick. Love ya Huz. Grateful to be making our dreams a reality side by side. #drinkcoffeedostuff
I’m thinking it’s time to go back to Hawaii. Who’s with me?! 🌺 Shot on @sonyalpha: a7R III | 90mm | f/16 | ISO 3200 | 1/1600 sec #alphacollective #sonyalpha #bealpha #bealphafemale
WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!!! ⠀ As cliché as it is, I have tears writing this. @nickvisconti and I have patiently waited years for our “forever” home in @visittruckee. Finally, at the exact perfect moment, God opened up all the right doors and before we knew it, our offer on our dream Lindel Cedar Mountain home in Glenshire had been accepted and we were signing papers. To say we’re grateful is an understatement — special shout-out to Nick’s Dad Joe our realtor, and our mortgage broker/dear friend @lukelewis_lifestyle_lender for making this happen so quickly and seamlessly. ⠀ And now the fun begins! You can bet I’ll be posting a gazillion photos of the nesting process, so stay tuned 😍🏡
Keep Tahoe Blue 💙
Just two Lauras, keeping an eye out for grizzlies 🐻 Pro tip: if you’re heading to Banff and want to visit and photograph the iconic Moraine Lake, you need to get there INSANELY EARLY. Even sunrise isn’t early enough. There will be a surprising amount of people trying to do the same thing, and parking is limited! 📷: @missruthanne