I have a few favorite people in my life, and one of them owns a thriving and innovative business called Portland Alternative Realtors. She asked me to come to Portland to photograph her team and some of their clients for their new advertising campaign, so of course I eagerly booked my ticket! This is a real estate company that is bringing a truly refreshing approach to selling homes. They have successfully avoided the showy, shallow, salesman types, and instead selected a diverse group of down-to-earth people who have the ability to look beyond what is expected and find really unique properties for really unique people.

I love that we managed to pull off the impossible and bring together these busy and smart phone dependent realtors to take some profile shots and group pictures for their website. Then we travelled all over the sunshine filled town to photograph some of their clients in their fitting spaces. I was so inspired to see all of the different ways that people live and follow their passions, and it seems like Portland is a place where people actually take the time to not only develop their passions, but enjoy them too. I have to admit that after 3 days of perfect weather in Portland I was just about ready to convince my family to uproot everything, change states and buy a new house near the farmer’s market and a few restaurants….for real.

This may look like a pretty random collection of images, but imagine them with taglines like these:

* When living 3000 miles away from your grandchildren is no longer acceptable.

* When your Friday night pub crawls have turned into Saturday morning play dates.

* When your storage space is cramping your shoe collection’s style.

* When your books have earned a room of one’s own