TAMARA ALVAREZ

Photography, Marketing and Project Coordinator

Tamara was on a family vacation when she borrowed her father’s camera and never gave it back. (He said she could keep it.) The change in focus inspired her to sail past her Associates of Applied Science in Photography degree to a Bachelor of Visual Arts from Emily Carr University in Vancouver, British Columbia. There she studied sculpture, ceramics and printmaking.

“Everyone in photo school wanted to shoot fashion, sports, or weddings,” Tamara says. “I always wanted to shoot for Architectural Digest.” As her printmaking teacher told her, “once a photographer always a photographer.”

Tamara lived in Washington State, New Mexico, London, Switzerland, Vancouver, and Montreal before moving to Key West in 2012. She spent eight years working as a floral designer, unexpected training for her future career.

She came to Craig Reynolds Landscape Architects as a part-time office coordinator, but her role has grown to include marketing, photography, and social media. (She’s the reason we have over 25,000 Instagram followers.) Her images of CRLA projects have been featured in magazines such as Ocean Home, Landscape Architect, Garden Design, and Florida Design, among others. (Ocean Home and Florida Design were covers!)

Tamara is an art class junkie, always signing up for classes to learn new techniques. She has taught iPhone photography at The Studios of Key West. When not in the office or shooting for other clients she loves to ride along on her partner’s charter boat or wander the backstreets of Key West, shooting images for her popular @the_sunnyside_up Instagram feed.

Favorite Plant?

I can't choose just one. Photographing gardens and working around plants is meditative to me, it’s a great creative outlet. Watching how the light and all the elements that make up the garden change throughout the day and how the right light can emphasize an area that was overlooked or change the mood and feel of a space makes my job even more rewarding. I have always loved plants and photographing them.