Ariena Photography

Ellen was a joy to work with from day one, and her photos are incredible. Seriously I cannot recommend her enough. She is kind and smart and will help you to look your best no matter what. A true artist and just an all-around wonderful person. She captured our day so beautifully, truly more lovely than I even dared to dream for. Would recommend to anyone I know!

Ellen is a literal dream. She went above and beyond, exceeding our expectations in every way. She is extremely responsive to email, and always ready to answer all your questions. From the beginning, Ellen makes you feel comfortable and yourself while going through this process. Our engagement photoshoot was everything we wanted, and she was happily willing to hike up mountains and over beaches for us! On the day of the wedding, Ellen was a true professional. She made sure to got every photo we wanted, and kept us on time. Plus, everyone apart of our wedding loved her! When we got our photos back, I cried. She captured our beautiful day to perfection. Our day would not have have been nearly as perfect without her! Ellen is everything you want in a wedding photographer!

We are so OBSESSED with Ellen and her work. Her portfolio is something you can spend hours appreciating while day-dreaming about your own photos. We are so happy to have found Ellen and choosing her for our engagement photoshoot was the best decision. From our first contact to today, she has been so amazing. Her experience and knowledge made our shoot easy and fun. We flew from Miami to Seattle just for this and would definitely do it all over again. We cannot wait to have her be part of our wedding in Spain. Thank you/Дякую тобі. ми любимо вас, Rachel&William

Anyone who needs a wedding photographer and engagement photographer needs to hire Ellen. She did our engagement and wedding photos. My husband and I loved our photos. Ellen is very talented and has a great passion for photography. We enjoyed shooting with her. We love her work and she is very kind, respectful, and professional. Her photos are amazing and we are beyond grateful for her.

Planning Process: Planning a wedding is stressful, but doing it during the COVID-19 pandemic magnified the stress level tenfold. After plans kept on changing, we developed back-up plans to our back-up plans. Thankfully, Ellen was there throughout the whole time. She was understanding and didn't make us feel guilty when our plans kept on changing. Using her great intuition and patience, she knew when to wait for our cue, when to reach out a hand when we felt like drowning, and being on-call throughout the planning process. Her communication skills helped keep us on track with what to expect on the wedding day from her and us. Day of Wedding: While Ellen was punctual and dependable, I was late getting to the venue after my makeup and hair appointment at the salon. I felt terrible for making her wait, but my nerves were calmed once I saw her and reassured me. During the preview session, she made us feel like we were the only people in the world. For the most part, Ellen let us do our own thing and have our conversations, and she followed us along capturing our intimate moments - it felt completely natural. When she did prompt us to do things it brought out the best in us. Even though we felt awkward at the time when she asked us to walk this way or look at each other that way, I'm glad we trusted her and went along with it anyways. We also loved her dry humor and awesome accent! After the wedding: Ellen is a hard-worker. She finished editing a few hundred pictures within a week and shared them with us in the gallery as a Sneak Peak. The pictures are gorgeous, crisp, and true to who we are as a couple. We're so happy for the Sneak Peak because it quenched our thirst! Within a month, she had finished editing the remaining pictures which are equally perfect. The pictures have two versions: high-res and web-size (perfect for social media needs). Additional Comments: We are so thankful for Ellen. She is a reliable, encouraging, and compassionate person to work with and a fabulous photographer with a great eye for detail. Our wedding day was perfect because she made the experience so easy. And because of her, we can re-live our wedding day every time we see our beautiful pictures. We would definitely recommend her to others and work with her again! Thank you so much, Ellen!

Ellen is a great photographer who can capture the most precious moments of the wedding. She is also very good at taking romantic pictures of the couple, which always took my breath away. It was a great experience working with her and I'll definitely recommend her to my friends.

Ellen has honestly been the most amazing photographer to work with! She has been flexible through all the craziness this year has brought, and has worked with us now through our engagement shoot, elopement shoot, and will shoot our vow renewal and reception next year. She's made us feel so comfortable which allowed the photos to turn out beautifully - and she has gotten them back to us so quickly. Could not recommend her enough!

Ellen is an outstanding wedding photographer! She captured our special day perfectly and we enjoyed working with her. We absolutely love our wedding pictures!

Working with Ellen is a dream! Her photos always turn out amazing and the edits are all timeless as well. She knows how to get the shot and will deliver authentic moments. I cannot recommend her enough, and she went way beyond our expectations. She worked with our budget and makes us feel like we were taken care of. Plus she’s LGBTQ+ friendly :)

Ellen is AMAZING. My husband and I are so happy and thankful to have had her capture our wedding day. She sent us sneak peak photos really soon after the wedding, which was really nice, and we absolutely loved them. I might not have gotten much work done that day because I kept looking at them haha. In all seriousness, her work is gorgeous, book her! She does such a wonderful job with every photo, and captured really precious moments in a way that captures the emotions from the day. In addition to her excellent quality of work, she's super easy and fun to work with. She's very responsive to our messages and was very timely each time we met. She kindly meet with us when we first contacted her, and took the time to get to know us more and make us feel comfortable as we took the engagement photos, which really put us at ease for the wedding photos. She has excellent attention to detail, and additionally helped us with planning out our timeline and had great ideas for details. She really goes above and beyond, and is so good at what she does. We are so glad to have these beautiful photos that genuinely capture us to look back on!

Ellen was a great joy to work with. She runs her business in an organized and professional way, which really helps when you are juggling all those balls that go into a first class wedding. She is a very gifted photographer and was able to capture the true character of each of us and the joy and happiness of our wedding. You get not only a person who covers all the wedding photo bases but who also brings an artist's eye to the process. Thank you Ellen!

Ellen was amazing! We love our photos and the warmth she captured on our day. She was so helpful and accommodating and had our photos back to us almost immediately. We will cherish the memories and photos for the rest of our lives. Thank you Ellen!

Amazing, breathtaking, awesome photos! Ellen shot our elopement and captured it more beautifully than we could have dreamed. She was flexible throughout the day and her photos made everything come alive. Our wedding seriously couldn't have happened without Ellen. She did everything from helping me get into my wedding dress, to hiking out into the forest and down into a waterfall to help capture our dream day of getting married a National Park. She was funny and easy-going about our non-traditional wedding. She let us just do what we wanted, no posing, which allowed us to just enjoy the first few moments of being married. We felt really comfortable with her, and really appreciated having her there! The photos are so dreamy, and she had them back to us super quickly. She even worked with us to get a shot to us the next day so we could "announce" our marriage to family and friends ASAP. All of our friends and family have said our pictures are some of the most beautiful they have ever seen. And we agree. Thanks so much Ellen, you're the best!!

Ariena Photography captured our engagement and wedding photos perfectly! Having wedding photos I loved was very important to me and I obsessed over a bunch of portfolios ahead of time. Our photos completely surpassed my expectations. Ellen was a pleasure to work with and we wholeheartedly recommend hiring her!

In a nutshell, we are SO GLAD we hired Ariena Photography for our wedding. Ellen really went above and beyond; not only by getting to know us beforehand (we had our engagement shoot done by another photographer a few months prior to finding her), but also by paying attention to details and making a point of catching those shots that were particularly important to us. We had a few extra hurdles to navigate around on our big day, such as the groom and I getting ready in two totally different locations of Seattle, and a videographer to dance around at my hotel and venue. No problem! With the help of her assistant, Ellen made it all work flawlessly. And frankly, other than my makeup artist, she was one of the *only* aspects of our wedding that truly was blessedly flawless. Her assistant proved to be a big help too when it came to signing our certificate since we had questions and our officiant was from Canada. You can tell these ladies really know their weddings and their photography skills. Not only did the photos turn out exceptionally wonderful, but Ellen was FAST too! I mean more than *twice* as quick as our engagement photographer. I wish I'd found her sooner! We wouldn't have had to wait so long to send out our wedding invitations if we had. The cherry on the cake was in receiving the photos. As a graphic designer, I have a 'thing' about how things are visually presented. While I won't spoil the surprise for you, I will say that I indeed cried from her thoughtfulness. Remember that attention to details thing I mentioned a little bit ago? I meant it. Ellen far exceeded both of our expectations. If given the opportunity again, we'd hire her in a heartbeat. And you should too.

My husband and I are so happy with the photos Ellen has taken and we want to thank her for capturing all the special moments from our big rainy day in San Francisco! We appreciate her ability to give friendly direction to achieve the best vision! The photos are so natural what is amazing if we remember that rainy and windy day in downtown of San Francisco. A lot of people on streets but Ellen was able to make us feel comfortable and relaxed. Also our family and friends have only great things to say about shots. We sent them the link to website so they could enjoy photos. I’ll absolutely recommend Ellen to anyone who needs a photographer, especially for rock-n-roll style!

Ellen Synenko is the BEST! Selecting a professional photographer you hope to get one, which not only knows how to use his camera, but also will not miss the crucial moments during your wedding. I want to underline that Ellen is not an ordinary photographer who will fix all the crucial moments, but an outstanding artist who will portrait meaningful and heartwarming pictures. Her advises are far beyond the typical recommendations. Thanks to her I have selected my wedding dress, gown, flowers, etc. We have discussed my whole look in advance in order to build an elegant and graceful image and not a gaudy one overwhelmed with details. Her vital suggestions helped to enjoy our special day and not get tired from taking pictures. Ellen portrayed us not only in standard settings, but also inspired us to improvise and get fun soulful images. It would be rude to address her work as "photo", when it is honestly a painting. We are very grateful and appreciate what she did for us. The album we made in paper we are going to show to our grand grand children in 100 years, and we definitely know that even in those high-tech times it will look posh and not old-fashioned. I must mention that I have requested her not to picture us (me and my husband) separately after the ceremony, because we have a weird prejudgment belief that after the ceremony the couple should always be pictured together in order not to get divorced. And even knowing how stupid it is, I wanted to keep it that way...and in all the rush after the ceremony I obviously forgot about it. To my surprise Ellen reminded me of it before taking the shot and saved me. :) Like super-hero she fixed the color of my wedding flower, when florist failed to deliver the right irises we ordered with two-month advance. She knew that I wanted to have blue irises in my wedding flower, so she laboriously modified the violet ones to look more blue even without my request. It is so nice of her to remember all the tiny details the bride wants to have on her wedding! If not Ellen, we would not have such amazing panoramic pictures with the city. She showed extraordinary diligence and personally found the possible locations for the photo-shoot. I did not know that such beautiful views existed! She works out all the details in her head in advance and sees what is missing or how it can be improved. It's simply spectacular. She really enjoys what she is doing and she is happy when you are happy. For wedding professional it is indispensable quality. I admire her as a person and as a professional. She is kind, genuine, outgoing and really very very talented. I compliment her approach, style and highly recommend her as a photographer.

Ellen did amazing work. We are not the type to pose for photos, but she was so patient and easy to work with. She captured beautiful photos and was able to accommodate our requests as well as our guests' requests. We really appreciate all the direction she gave (at our request) since we aren't experienced with photo shoots. We would definitely recommend using Ellen and Ariena Photography! Thank you Ellen!

We were absolutely blown away by Ellen’s professionalism, artistic eye and creativity. We felt at ease and comfortable as well as our guest. She caught so many details I hadn’t thought of and now we have them forever in cherished photos. Ellen did our fall Engagement photos in a arboretum in Seattle and our wedding photos at the beautiful castle where we were married . She never disappoints.

We couldn’t have asked for a better photographer for our special day!!! From the very beginning Ellen was so warm, friendly, professional and easy to communicate with, and I was shocked to find such an amazing photographer at a reasonable price (seriously go check out the photos on her website)! Having a fantastic photographer at our wedding was one of my top priorities as far as vendors and she did not disappoint, we LOVED the selection of photos she sent us, so many more photos than I even expected! As someone who is nervous getting their picture taken I was extremely happy with the results. She even met us in Napa for an engagement photoshoot so we could all get to know each other and so my fiancé and I would be more comfortable in front of the camera. The winery location she chose and the pictures were so perfect, and I felt much more relaxed when taking photos on our wedding day. The day of our wedding went very smoothly and we got all the pictures I had asked for, including driving to another location for some beach pictures. Ellen was so accommodating when I asked to book her for several extra hours and she was able to add that to our photo package at a wonderful price, as well as brought her husband along as an assistant. If you’re looking for the perfect wedding photographer here she is! We were blown away by the quality and style of her photos and are so happy that we found her, and highly recommend her to anyone needing a talented artist for their special day. Thank you Ellen!

I discovered Ellen while looking at a friend's wedding and engagement photo, and was in awe of the fact that they looked like they belonged in a magazine. Another friend of mine got engaged and I showed her these beautiful pictures I had seen, and Ellen did their wedding and engagement pictures as well. The results were absolutely stunning. So when I got engaged, I knew exactly who I wanted to go to! I was so lucky to get her, she is one busy woman, and I can see why. Ellen did my engagement and wedding photos and I couldn't be happier with them. I am a very picky person when it comes to seeing my face in print. I just couldn't believe how many frames I fell in love with! Ellen is blessed with a phenomenal natural talent, and is so calm and peaceful to work with. I wish I could rate her with more than 5 stars!

Ellen's work is absolutely breathtaking. She shot my brother in law's wedding, and after seeing their pictures we knew that she had to shoot ours too. We can't believe how perfectly she captured our day! My husband and I were both worried because we thought we would be awkward in front of the camera, but she made us look incredible. Planning was also a breeze. She quickly responded to any questions or concerns that I had. Shortly after our wedding, she sent us a link so we could peek at some of the edited shots. Shortly after, we received our wedding pictures on a beautiful thumb drive. We got over 1,000 edited and unedited shots - all of them stunning! So many of our friends planning future weddings are asking us where we got our photos. I couldn't recommend Ellen any more. She was affordable, extremely professional, fun to work with, and her work is amazing.