Elsa Kendall was the Co-founder and Creative Director of Arena Editions (1997-2003), an international leader in photography book publishing. She art-directed and designed most of their 55 titles, many award winning and recognized by such publications as The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Vogue, New Yorker, PDN, and American Photo, among others. (You can view the video, About me: Video Presentation covering part of her career under the Portfolio tab here.)

She has been using the photographic medium in her own work for many years. Her passion for storytelling and imagery began when she acquired a Brownie Hawkeye camera at the age of eight. She spent her formative years in England and returned to the USA for college where she obtained a degree with honors in interior architecture & design.

Elsa started working as a graphic designer at the end of paste-up and the dawn of the desktop publishing era in 1988. She continues her work as a writer, photographer, teacher, and media designer in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she has lived for the past 16 years.

In 2008 she started her first blog, Bird’s Eye View from the Land of Enchantment. This was a place where she could plonk all the creative activities with which she was engaged: photography, ceramics, jewelry, print making, and writing; as well as a place to recount stories about her life living in the woods 10 miles outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Later that year another blog was created to house the photos she had made of Barack and Michelle Obama on their campaign trail. It would also become a resource for voter protection, and a site for links to some of her political writing, which lasted all of three months. Called The Blue Point of View, you can visit it by clicking here.

Last year Elsa was asked to create a member-supported website to share the bounty of doTERRA’s certified, pure, therapeutic-grade essential oils. doTERRABella (and Fella) was born.

For the last three years she has continued to educate herself in the adventure of e-Commerce & Marketing through webinars, blogcasts, and reading and implementing an inordinate amount, both on and off screen. Her inspiration is story telling and inspiring others to share theirs with images and words through the world wide web. She has a few personal projects in the works: a print-on-demand book featuring the adventures of Parlez Beaucoups the cat, a free e-book called “Tulips and Bellydancers”, and “Secret Garden”, a bonafide illustrated book that you can actually put on your coffee table.