Charo started life as a painter and writer, growing up with her artist and urban-gypsy mom on the beautiful island of Maui. She was encouraged from an early age to pursue her love of creating, and her search for the truth, through the arts. Although photography is in her blood (her estranged father was an excellent hobbyist and aspired to go pro), she didn’t pick up a “real” camera until she was in her early 20′s, living a fairly mundane life on the coast of North Carolina. “This!” she exclaimed. “This is what I’ve been looking for!” After so many years of writing and painting and sketching, searching for patterns in human behavior through prose and acrylic, it was this simple light-tight box that held her future. Her story quickly became the standard fare; friends and relatives who knew she had an eye bribed her to shoot their weddings. Initially she hated it, but the challenge was too great to let go. It wasn’t long before she was photographing weddings every weekend, traveling long distances to spend weekends with families she’d never met before, and seeing her work published in regional magazines. In 2007, Professional Photographer Magazine ran her story as one of their featured photographers in the annual Weddings issue, an honor that Charo, a self-proclaimed hippie with no aspirations for fame or fortune, found both exhilarating and completely overwhelming. Today, Charo lives in that same coastal Carolina town with her nutty little family, making endless To Do Lists and shooting weddings from coast to coast.