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Villa Medici  is a gorgeous structure, complete with formal gardens and majestic views of Rome. It's situated just above the famous Spanish Steps and it's the current location of my childhood friend's restoration job. She is in charge of cleaning and fixing and restoring marble statues, stucco, murals, and gesso (and more) within the villa. It was such an awesome private tour of this villa and her job site! I can't wait to go back to explore even more... we only had a few hours to roam around the property this time... not enough! ;) Here are some images of those few hours at Villa Medici, in Rome.

Doors are beautiful to me. Especially if they are old. When I see them, I imagine the thousands of hands that may have pushed them open and shut them closed, throughout the years, decades, centuries. This is a collection of doors I came across in my last trip to Italy. Specifically, these doors are from towns in Umbria and Latium and Tuscany. I might just order one big poster of this for our home's foyer! 

Orvieto is a small burg in the hills of the Italian region of Umbria. It began, like most towns in the area, as an Etruscan village. It became, throughout the ages, Roman, Medieval and then "modern". Not much of the architecture has changed, however. Orvieto maintains it's position of power, atop a flat bluff made of solidified volcanic ash (called tuff - which is what 90% of the geology of the area is made of). The views from the town are beautiful: the Umbrian valley can be seen in it's undulating hills of colorful and varied crops. I love this part of my country. It's inspiring and it always leaves me in awe. Orvieto was new to me ... even if I am Italian, there are places in Italy that I have yet to visit! My best friend Michelle went to Italy with me, this time around. She was the one to convince me to take this day-trip. I am so glad we did! Here are a few images from our excursion (many images were taken with my iPhone - and are not posted here, and 3 h...

Casa San Marco is a beautiful medieval home, remodeled, taken care of throughout the centuries, well loved and simply beautiful. MoscaPhoto had the opportunity to live in the home for one week, this past March/April 2013, to photograph it in all it's glory. The owner is a genius when it comes to decorating and styling and designing spaces, and I was lucky enough to witness it being created, while photographing it. Casa San Marco is a rental property, when it is not being used by the family. These are but a handful of the images I have taken with many more to come, including updates on Casa San Marco's own website!  Thank you to Stacey for this incredible opportunity. Stars aligned for us to meet and collaborate and work together. Thank you to EVERYONE in  Cortona  for your hospitality and friendship (see my friend Denyse's  Tuscany Tours  site!)... Grazie davvero di cuore! Non vedo l'ora di rivedervi e di farvi vedere anche le foto di quella famo...

Back in May of 2012, I travelled to my home town of Rome (and visited Umbria which is where my parents have a home). I was there for 2 week, visiting family and friends. It had been 9 years since I was there last. You can only imagine the tears of joy flowing from my eyes when I landed and began to hear Italian being spoken all around me. As this 2012 year coms to an end, I feel that collages of highlights of travels and shoots we've had the pleasure of taking part of, must be posted... so many memories to share with you! To see much larger images of many more details of my trip to Italia, please click on this link.

Not many places in the world are like this place. The Salton Sea has always fascinated me. It's story from it's accidental creation, to the good 'ol days during mid-century times, and it's demise due to pollution and neglect. I've read just about everything there is to know about this place and it's even more intriguing now! When we were in Palm Springs last week,  we decided to take a half-day trip to the lake. We had to choose which side (east or west) to see, since we didn't have much time left in the day. We chose on the east side and went straight to a place called Bombay Beach, CA . 300 people still live here and swear by it. An earthen levi was built to protect "the town" from flooding toxic waters. This is what remains of the old town, on the other side of the barrier. I wish the light had been better for photos, but I sure know for a fact that we will return and will explore much, much further.

This is a bit of a non-wedding related post. Hope you don't mind ;) Josh and I traveled to CA and AZ with my parents (for the first two weeks of December 2012) and it was glorious. The weather was perfect and the sights to see were as majestic as I remembered them to be. We can't wait to go back for more exploring! Among many images taken, I have selected but a few from  Tucson AZ , for now. It means a lot to me to show you where I went to school so many years ago... I hadn't been there since I graduated in 2000! This is San Xavier Mission , 20 minutes south of Tucson. It was sunny and in the 80s. There was hardly a soul, too! It felt like we had the whole place to ourselves. The last two images are from our day trip to Saguaro National Park West . It is also located very near Tucson. We got there right around sunset and it was amazing! Thanks for looking and we hope you'll check back soon, because I'll be posting more of our travel images... SO fun!

Part 2 of 2 of my trip to Italy is here. This set includes Rome as well. ( Part 1 is here  and here is a blurb/introduction about my trip as written in Part 1: I had the opportunity to visit my country (Italy) this past May 14th to 25th 2012, after nine long years of absence. Almost one decade away from any place, makes it for a very exciting and emotional time. Many things have changed in nine years, while traditions and foods and the beauty that is Italy, remained the same. I visited with all of my family members, had an amazing time around the region of Umbria (where my parents live and where I had never been) and loved revisiting my city (Rome) and my town (Bracciano). Thanks for looking! <3 Train station, Roma Termini, Rome Scenes from the train station, Roma Termini, Rome

My absence from the MoscaPhoto blogging world is justified, I promise. I had the opportunity to visit my country (Italy) this past May 14th to 25th 2012, after nine long years of absence. Almost one decade away from any place, makes it for a very exciting and emotional time. Many things have changed in nine years, while traditions and foods and the beauty that is Italy, remained the same. I visited with all of my family members, had an amazing time around the region of Umbria (where my parents live and where I had never been) and loved revisiting my city (Rome) and my town (Bracciano). I am really excited to show you a handful of my favorite images from my 9 day trip, and have decided to split the post up into two different ones (one per day) because I realized that even if I am picking a handful of favorites, I have WAY too many to post all at once :) My goal is to travel back to my home country more often, and to spread MoscaPhoto's reach there as well. There are many mon...

This is a little bit of a personal post. There's nothing wrong with being open and willing to share a bit of my own personal self with you too, right? ;) If any of you have read our about page here, you'll know that I was born in Roma and am an Italian citizen. Even if I've been in the awesome USA for 15 years, I love and miss Rome and when I decided to get my old album out of the shelf, I though to scan some of my old film images to show you here. I can't wait to go back to visit my family and friends and to take Josh with me too! Thanks for looking though this little slice of my world ;) <3 ~ Alice (ps: these are scans of regular 'ol 35mm 4x6 prints. they started off in color but had faded to something i wasn't happy with, so I applied a simple Sepia action to get them consistent. in case I have any technical people reading ;) Tarquinia

Panama. It's an amazing place. I have lived in Caracas, Venezuela (among other places in the world) and had a pre-determined idea of what Panama was going to be like, being "another latin country". Well, boy was I wrong. My parents live there (have for 4 years) and have attempted to explain and describe it to me, but nothing was more convincing than to actually be there and experience it.  Images don't do it justice. It is well worth travelling to and spending some quality time exploring and talking to the locals. They are extremely proud of their country and willing to talk with you to show you just how excited they are to have the canal and all it's money back in their hands. Their president has used (and is using) this money, to grow the city in all it's glory. New infrastructure, new buildings, new roads, more police force, gardens, public works, etc...  Don't get me wrong. It's still a latin country and it's still in it's early ...

Hello friends! I've been missing for the past 12 days from the MoscaPhoto BLOG world (but super active on our  Facebook page , be sure to like us over there too! ;) because I was abroad! My parents live in Panama and I had the opportunity of having an early holiday break with them there. I left on the 6th and returned just yesterday (the 18th of December). I have SO many images to show you! I'll be taking today to get back on my feet after being away for a while, so many more photos will be coming at you soon... for now, I wanted to share one of them ;) You should have seem me this night... I was walking back from a resort to the little condo that my parents have just down the street in  Playa Blanca  when I noticed that the moon was simply glorious! Not only that, the skies were clear and the stars were bright. So I ran to the condo, grabbed my camera and ran right back to the beach. It was around 11pm. I was all alone in the dark (just moonlit) and s...

It's been a while since we've posted anything personal ;) I've been looking through our computers, in hopes of cleaning up hard drives and permanently storing older images, to make way for new shoots... in this process, I have come across never before seen images of urban scenes and urban details of the beautiful Portland Oregon. Our city is cozy and architecturally interesting. Josh and I used to spend more time walking around town, looking for details to photograph... here are some from a few years ago that I'd love to share with you. Wider scenes are what we clearly see, even from cars while driving. Closer up details are aspects of the environment around us that we only see if we take out time, walk around and look hard. All are worth capturing. Thanks for looking! :)

"Thou canst not travel on the Path before thou hast become that Path itself."   Madame Blavatsky;  "Voice of the Silence", 1889. Paraphrased:   “ You cannot travel the path until you have become the path itself .” Words I have always lived by. Part of the excitement of getting to a destination, is the actual journey. This is why, I am addicted to road trips and am absolutely glad and excited that Josh shares this same sentiment with me. America is the perfect land for such long trips, especially here in the West. Looking out the window, as landscapes go by, I find myself speechless and enamored. Taking roads less taken is also key to our roads trips, which falls right back to making the journey just as exciting as the destination. The image above is from the top of a mesa, in the extreme parts of SE Utah. From this spot, we can see Monument Valley and Mexican Hat. Here, we had just left Canyon de Chelly in Arizona and had begun our treck northwest t...

Thank you for looking through our " Dreaming of Hawaii Sneak Peek post "! We have edited and organized the rest of the images we took on our trip and are happy to share them with you here. As a recap, Josh and I went for 8 days to Hawaii. Specifically, to Oahu. We stayed in Waikiki and took trips to the surrounding beaches with our new friends Krystal & Nate, who are in some of the images below ;) This trip came at the perfect time for us wedding photographers... Even though we have already started our wedding season with a wedding in March and one in early April and one coming up at the end of April, we are still in the slow time of the year. When June comes, we will start working no-stop until the autumn, so leaving when we did and for as long as we did, was perfect. We are now recharged, tan, warm, happy and ready to start the season! Hawaii was beautiful. We could have done more touristy activities, but decided to keep it slow and relaxed instead. We did spen...

Hi friends! Josh and I went on a much needed vacation to Hawaii last week and are already back in Portland, recharged and happy! The trip was 8 days long and incredible to say the least. The weather was perfect: 84 degrees and 70% humid. Sunny every single, day, except for the day we rented kayaks and an underwater housing for our big Nikon D3... that day, albeit warm, it poured. Totally worth the day-trip anyway, though! We made new friends on the island too... Krystal and Nate are from Portland and we ended up spending the entire time with them. We even photographed them on a sort of quick lifestyle shoot to commemorate their love on the island-paradise. Along with all of the beach/sun/pina coladas in Waikiki and surroundings, we also decided to hop on the local bus for an hour and a half trip through city streets, all the way to Pearl Harbor. That day was amazing as well. Touching and special. What a place and what history. We have lots more to share with you as far as commentar...

Hi everyone! Josh and I have been absent in the Blog-World... we know and apologize for it! ;) We have, however, been constantly updating our Facebook Page and hope that you were able to see the updates and progress of our road trip to Las Vegas as it was happening! Well, another amazing trip to the SW has come and gone. Josh and I visit the annual, giant, photography conference in Las Vegas ( WPPI ) every single year. Every year, it happens right around the end of February/beginning of March. Last year, we flew down for three days. This year, we decided to drive down! Portland , through back-country SE Oregon , through back-country Nevada , to Las Vegas . Then on our way back, we decided to take a little "detour" to the amazing Grand Canyon , in Arizona. I know... not a "detour" per se, sine it was about 300 miles in the opposite direction ;) It was worth the extra two days on the road... let me tell you! We are photographers, as you know, so every si...

The Rose Garden (Washington Park) is beautiful. Especially when the sky is slightly overcast and when there are hardly any people around. Last year, we visited it right after sunset, since it's so close to where MoscaPhoto lives :) and played around with our new nikon 85mm 1.4 and a 24mm 1.4 too. Just those two lenses, nothing more. Portland is so pretty! ;)

Aahhh Portland, Oregon. Its a little town with a big city mentality. And its super photogenic. This set of images was taken strictly within a one square mile area, if that, at the north waterfront location, right around the iconic red bridge (the Broadway Bridge). This area includes our grand central station, the main train hug of the city, old mills and water warehouses, construction zones paving the way for new luxury condos. When the sky is clear of clouds and rain, the colors and vitality of the city really pop. Its one of classic portrait/engagement session areas, when we want to do an uber-urban one, and it a few miles away from our MoscaPhoto headquarters. Welcome to Portland! :) ~ Alice & Josh

Love this city. Josh and I decided to walk around what we expected to be a deserted city, on this 2010 Christmas Day. There were indeed some people with our same idea, but for the most part, plenty of parking and hardly anyone around. It wasn't raining either, so we were able to take some snapshots of the holiday decor and some of the details of the gorgeous buildings. Oh! And we also found a "totally Portland" Christmas related wall art. I think you'll know which one it is out of this collection, once you see it! LOLz :) Happy Holidays!