Two photographers, three dream spaces

Before the studios, we were photographers shooting all over downtown LA. Kristi came from dance, so her portraits move. I came from marketing and graphic design, so mine look like movie stills. Friends with thriving studios on Peerspace kept telling us to build one of our own.

2021

Etherea combined units 902 and 903 into one space on the 9th floor of a 1927 building in the Fashion District. The address was 719, the area code of Colorado Springs, where Kristi grew up, and still the area code of her phone number. We took it as a sign.

The idea for Etherea came from surreal dreamscapes made in Blender that were turning up on Pinterest. We decided to build one for real. I grew up around renovation and construction, so that felt possible. Most of the rooms on my Etherea board were made on a computer, but they became the starting point for a place we could photograph in.

We worked with natural tones and bright white subway tile, moving from those references toward a room we could build. We designed every set in 3D first, using Blender, and the concepts kept changing right up to the build.

The fire code shaped the room too. We used steel studs instead of wood, along with fire-treated lumber, and installed new sprinklers. The set walls had to stay low enough for water to reach over them, which is why the pink wall stops short of the ceiling. Then we built what we had been moving around on screen.

The best studios we knew gave photographers several looks in one booking. Beside our sets, we kept a seamless paper corner with nothing in the way. The desert set had arches, warm plaster and sculptural steps. In the forest set, we worked with greenery, water and layered platforms. Etherea brought the two sets into the same loft, with a lounge between them.

2023

Terra and Solaris both followed in 2023, each designed in Blender before we built it. For Terra, we used an earth-tone palette and sets based on a circle, a U-shaped cut-out and semi-circles, with southeast-facing windows. Solaris was a bright corner studio and needed far less build-out. Its tall windows on two walls were the draw, so we kept the room simple, with limewash walls and archways.

Kristi ran the lofts day to day. Etherea was booked from day one and ranked No. 9 among the top 10 Los Angeles production spaces in the Peerspace Open Door Awards 2023. The Terra build timelapse reached 3.2 million views on Instagram. Across all three lofts, there were more than 1,000 reviews with a 5.0 average.

2025

In January, we moved home to Colorado to start our family. Kristi continued running the lofts from there. We sold 719 Studios on June 15, 2026.