Debra A. Zeller Photography

Dates haven’t been locked in yet, but I’ll most likely be spending November and December in Florence, Italy, so if you’re thinking of getting married in Tuscany or anywhere in Europe and need a photographer, look no further!

I shared with you some photos from my trip back in December and January, and now here are some from my trip this past March. Enjoy!

San Gimignano, Italy

Basilica of San Frediano, Lucca, Italy

Lucca, Italy

Rocca Maggiore, Assisi, Italy

Assisi, Italy

Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi

Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Assisi, Italy

Villa Fidelia. Just outside Spello, Italy

oxoxo,
Debra

I spent most of December and January in beautiful Florence, Italy. Below are handful of photos from my trip. Enjoy!

oxoxo,
Debra

I’m finally getting around to posting some photos from my trip to Argentina this past August. Better late than never, right? First up is a shot inside our cute little apartment we rented, followed by some various shots throughout the city.

oxoxo,
Debra

I recently won a 1st Place award in the Q3 Wedding Photojournalist Association (WPJA) contest in the Lit Portrait category. I’m so honored and thrilled!  Here’s the winning shot of Caroline & Milo, which was taken this past August in Argentina.

oxoxo,
Debra

Ok, so I’ve been absent for a month or so and I sincerely apologize! I have a good excuse though, I went to Argentina for most of August. So I have a lot of updating to do, I know, please stay tuned because I’m working on a few post right now.

First up is a lovely post-wedding portrait session with a lovely couple I met while on my trip. Meet Carolina & Milo. These two were hitched this past March, but had a major hiccup on their big day in that their priest never showed up! After keeping 380 guests waiting for 2 hours, a close friend of the family stepped in and performed the ceremony, though not legally, they had to track down the priest a few weeks later to finally make it legal. To make up for the wedding day hassle, we enjoyed a stress free portrait session on a lovely Argentinean night. The clouds in the sky were being illuminated by the city lights, it was pretty cool as you can see below. The car shots were also a blast to do. When they said they had a little red Fiat, I jumped at the chance to do a shoot with it. We kept seeing these adorable little Fiats all over Argentina (and Uruguay).

oxoxo,
Debra

Okay, so this will be the last post about our trip to Antigua. I took so many photos, this could probably go on for another 5 posts! I hope to go back to Guatemala one day and discover more of this amazing and beautiful country. One of the coolest things I’d like to point out about Antigua, and maybe this goes for the rest of the country, but since this is only place we stayed, it’s the only place I can honestly comment about – anyhow, everyone we passed looked us in the eye and greeted us with a heartfelt “buenos dias, buenos tardes, buenos noches”, whichever applied.

Greg has a photo of me taking this photo, of course. But I think I had the better view! Heh. I love this old structure with the wild vegetation growing inside.

Tuk Tuk’s were our main source of transportation. I seriously want one of these, but I could safely bet that after I park it in my neighborhood that it’d be stolen within 12 hours. Thing is, it shouldn’t be that hard to find since I’ve never seen one in SF, right? Still, I don’t want to test my luck.

Color color color. This town is a photographer’s dream come true! So, if I told you one of the below buildings was a McDonald’s, would you believe me? No? I probably wouldn’t either, but it’s safe to say I have a McDonald’s in one of these shots. One of the most amazing things about this place, other than the people, is that there’s no major billboards or advertisements on the buildings so your everyday fast food stop is not apparent. We saw a Domino’s Pizza, Subway, McDonald’s, and each time had to take a second look and think… “is that a…”, and come to find out, it was indeed what we thought we saw.

Okay, I said I’d show some ‘chicken bus‘ photos, and here they are! They are called chicken busses because on most days you can expect to find Guatemalan ladies bringing their chickens to sell at the farmer’s market. We didn’t have such luck, which I was slightly bummed about. But the busses themselves are all different and very much their own art pieces.

Of course I was thrilled to find this bus come buzzin by. I’m making this my last photo from the trip, because I’d like to think it’s my bus home (though it doesn’t go anywhere near California!).

oxoxo,
Debra

On our way to town one day we came across these cute cows. Just after I took this picture this cow came over to me and licked me! Yes, right after licking it’s own nose, I get a nice big slobber kiss. Nice!

During our stay in Antigua we stayed at this beautiful house that belonged to a woman that helps the Aware folks out. She was out of town while we were there so we had the place to ourselves. The red home to the left is where we stayed. In the distance is one of four volcanos that surrounds the town. On the day we arrived we could see the top of it, and I should of taken a photo then because thereafter it was always hidden under clouds.

Here’s a view of the courtyard. To the right is the main residence; we stayed in the quaint little place to the left.

And to top off the perfect landscaping she also has a butterfly garden!

I found this guy in the butterfly garden. Looks like he’s been there a while.

We found this quaint restaurant where we enjoyed several meals. I just love the warmth of the place.

I love visiting local farmer’s market.

oxoxo,
Debra

Puppies!!!! Who doesn’t love puppies? I don’t think I need to gush about how cute these pups are, it’d be like preaching to the choir.

So we brought the puppies back to the house we were staying at in Antigua and we were hoping to get a nice portrait of all of them together – how silly were we? They were running all over the place and all over Greg!

It was hard to pick a favorite, but if I had to choose one it would of been this cutie below with Greg.

Time for dinner!

You missed one!

After picking up the puppies and having crazy fun with them that evening, we had to get a good night sleep since we were being picked up at 4am in the morning to head to the airport.

We got the pups all checked in with no problems; four were checked in with baggage and one went on board with us. I was worried that he’d be hyper on the plane, but it was the opposite. The plane seems to have the same affect on dogs as it does me, it puts us to sleep! Yes, being on a plane puts me to sleep instantly, I feel lucky about that. He was so great, he didn’t complain or budge once.

Unfortunately we had a bit of a problem once we arrived at LAX; the fella who re-checks in your luggage after you’ve cleared customs wouldn’t take the pups and made us go crazy out of our way to check them in someplace else. This is not how it’s typically done, they are suppose to take them at that point, and since he didn’t, we barely made our flight by just a few minutes, and unfortunately the pups didn’t have the same luck. Our hearts were broken when we arrived at SFO and found they didn’t make the flight. The pups eventually made it 3 flights later that evening. So while we waited all night for the others to arrive, we took the one we had on board with us to take to the SPCA. This is our guy…

So now we’re at the SPCA and I’m nearly in tears at this point, it’s amazing how attached I get in such a small amount of time. It was soooo hard to say goodbye.

The good news is, all the pups have been adopted and are now living in loving homes. Don’t you just love a happy ending?

oxoxo,
Debra

Okay, so about our trip to Guatemala… Greg has a friend who works closely with an organization that rescues dogs, cats and even bunnies, called Aware based just outside of Antiqua, Guatemala. She called him up and said she needed someone to go down there and bring back 5 puppies. Well, it doesn’t take much arm twisting to get Greg and I on a plane and since we had a week we could spare, we volunteered.

Our journey out to Aware was quite an adventure. We took several “chicken buses” to get there (photos coming later). We got dropped off on the side of the freeway and headed up a dirt road. We walked for about 10 minutes before we could hear the dogs barking in the distance, I was so happy to hear them as I wasn’t sure we were on the right path. It took us about 20 minutes to reach the front gate of Aware and other 10 minutes to walk down their driveway, and it was only about 90 degrees!

We were so happy to reach the gate, now only if we had brought water.

No one was there when we got there so we jumped the fence and went and said hello to some of the dogs. I wish I could show you pictures of all of them, but they had around 200 (!). It was quite loud with all the barking, they all wanted us to come give them some love and play with them. This guy is so stunning, I really wish I could of brought him home with me, but alas, my cat wouldn’t have any of it.

Seriously, I was holding back the tears and still have a hard time looking at some of these photos. These dogs were so sweet and deserve a good home. I will say that Aware does take really good care of their dogs and has wonderful volunteers and vets on site helping take care of them.

We did see a lot of stray dogs on our trip, it seems to be a bit of a problem in Guatemala.

A post about the puppies is next, so stay tuned.

oxoxo,
Debra

Recently my good friend Greg and I took a trip to Antigua, Guatemala. I’ll be posting about our trip in 3 parts, so more on why we went will be coming later. First up, I wanted to share some images of roof overhang tiles (not sure what to call them). I love this sort of small detail that you wouldn’t even know they were there unless you looked up, they’re so beautiful. Sometimes beauty can be found in odd places.  Most of the buildings had tiles, but I never saw two buildings that had the same tiles.   Here’s a few examples.





oxoxo,
Debra