Hi, I’m
Alijah.

Most people stand up straighter and smile a little too hard the second a camera comes out, and suddenly they don’t look like themselves. Most of my job is getting people comfortable enough to forget I’m there.

Two family friends put a camera in my hands when I was 16 and showed me how to use it. I started on film, moved to digital a couple of years later, and shot everything in front of me: where I was, what I was doing, who I was with. It took years before I turned the camera toward people on purpose, and a while longer before I found weddings. More than 200 later, they’re still most of what I shoot.

On a wedding day I’m the calm one. The day is big and stressful for most people, and I try to make it feel less so. I’ll hand you something to say, or somewhere to walk, and then I’ll get out of the way. Couples tell me afterward that having me around helped them relax.

The same approach runs through everything else I shoot: engagements, families, personal branding, product and commercial work.

A few years ago I helped start New Wave Media, a photography studio in Portland. I was part of it from the first ideas through the launch and its first couple of years, then stepped back when my wedding calendar got too full to give both what they needed. A few of the videos I made there are below.

For a long time this work had a studio name on it, first Allove Images, then Allove Studios once video and commercial jobs joined in. I’m studying Business Technology and Analytics at Portland State, and photography is back to being something I do for the love of it. This site is my record and portfolio of that work, in photo and video, and of the tools I’ve started building.

The building side started by accident. I took a job I expected to be mostly photography, found the tools everyone leaned on were clunky, and started fixing them with a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet grew into software, and that software is now on its way to becoming a hosted tool. Somewhere in there I figured out I love building things too. AI has made that easier to learn than it’s ever been. If you’ve got a website or a tool that needs building, that’s the other half of what I do.

Off the clock, I’m with my people. I’m lucky to be close to both my adopted family and my biological family, and my two nieces have my entire heart (you’ll spot them in the portfolio here and there). Laila and I are recently engaged, so I’m planning a wedding of my own now, and a family after that. I also play video games, probably a little too much.

i’d love to hear your story - let’s set up a call.

I shoot

Weddings, engagements, families, personal branding, product and commercial

I build

Websites and tools

Elsewhere

Instagram · LinkedIn