Dear Friends,

I hope this finds you enjoying the warm days and long evenings of summer.  For me, it's been a busy, challenging and exciting summer.  On the photography front, I've been mixing it up a bit lately.  I'm still loving my documentary family sessions.  Additionally, I have several exciting personal projects going on (more about that in future newsletters) and recently decided to delve into telling the stories of small businesses.  It seems to me that the people who work together are a family too and they have a story to tell, not only about their business but about themselves as individuals.  More about this too in the months to come.

My first business feature is about a one-woman wonder.  Meet the extraordinary Jasmine Cho!

Jasmine is a small business owner, a pastry artist, and a human activist.  I recently had the pleasure of documenting Jasmine, including her incredible artistic talent and her successful online bakery business Yummyholic.  Jasmine's passion and mission go far beyond creating beautiful and delectable treats.  She combines her exquisitely crafted baked goods and her own brand of activism to spark conversations about creativity and cultural awareness around Asian American history and identity.  Jasmine is also currently enrolled at Carlow University in Pittsburgh where she is researching how baking can be used as a form of art therapy. 

For this assignment, I decided to dip my toe into the waters of multimedia and put together this piece for Jasmine to use on her website and social media outlets.

I photographed Jasmine just days before she spoke on the TEDxPittsburgh stage on June 15, 2019.  Her talk has been viewed by over 40,000 people since it was posted on YouTube on July 7th!

Jasmine's star is bright and rising and I can't wait to see what the future holds for her!