The Beginning

A city, a camera, and a project.

Paola grew up in Bogotá, Colombia. Her first real photographs came from a high-school assignment, her grandfather's 35mm camera in her hands, walking the city, taking pictures and writing about it. “It was the best time,” she says. “It worked out.”

She started down another path first, a career in medicine. But the ICU and the emergency room asked too much of a heart that felt everything. She would go home and still cry for the people she had met that day. It was taking too much.

When she came to the States, she signed up for a photography elective almost by accident. One class became the next, and the next. Then a professor said it plainly: “You're actually good at this. You should do this.”

Why She Never Stops Shooting

She knows what it feels like to not have the picture.

People sometimes wonder why she captures thousands of frames in a single day. It isn't doubt. It's that she grew up without the photographs she aches for now.

“I wish I had more photos of my childhood. Back then there weren't many cameras around, living in Colombia. I really wish I could see more of my grandfather's farm. All these photos that don't exist, but I wish I had.”

Paola Ohlson

So when she is at your wedding, she is not going to let a single moment slip away. Every angle, every glance, every bit of the light she can find. Because she knows, in her own life, exactly what it costs to lose one.

Then Came Lily

Becoming a mother changed how she sees.

When Paola had her daughter Lily, something shifted in the way she photographs families. The little moments she used to find sweet, she now feels in her bones.

“After you've been a mom, hearing it feels visceral. You understand that love, the win of having your whole family in a beautiful picture, with you in it too. So I photograph the connection between parents and kids, those moments we moms rarely get to have.”

Because the person holding the camera is almost never in the frame. Paola makes sure the mothers get to be.

Paola with Leighton and their daughter Lily

The Long View

Photographs that outlive all of us.

“Their whole heritage comes back to these two people getting together. Generations, one day, looking back at how it all started. The ultimate reward is having those photos in your hands, to look at them, feel them, touch them.”

Paola Ohlson

When she sees her work printed large on a couple's wall, she says it feels like having a museum exhibition, hung in hundreds of homes at once. That is what she is really making: not files on a drive, but the pictures your grandchildren will hold.

Paola photographing barefoot at the water's edge in a blue dress

Behind The Lens

Chasing the light, every time.

You will usually find Paola barefoot at the edge of the water, watching for the moment most people would walk right past. She does not wait for a scene to be perfect, she makes the most of whatever the light and the day give her.

This is the work she was quietly built for, and after hundreds of weddings and sessions, it still gives her goosebumps.

If This Sounds Like You

Let's make sure you keep this day.

Paola is for the couples who care about photography, who want their day remembered exactly as it felt. If that's you, she would love to hear your story.

Check Your Date