You can reach us at:

831-227-4796

Ted's email:nedskee@tahquechi.com

Husband and wife team, Carrie and Ted Tahquechi make up Tahquechi Photography. With over 20 ears of photography experience each, their time behind the lens shows in their work. Here is more about them:

Carrie Tahquechi

On any given morning, in the foggy city of Santa Cruz California, Carrie Tahquechi sits huddled behind her flame, the radiant heat of the torch warming the chill of the day. She peeks at the clock, Yes! There is just enough time to try to fit in one more before picking up the twins from school. She sits, intensely turning, combining and forming molten glass to create another exquisite handmade glass bead. She may take the beads she makes and expertly weave them into a beautiful chain mail necklace or bracelet, her newest obsession.

 

Carrie started beading in 1986, when during a visit to her fiancée’s family; a tribal elder and master bead designer taught her the fundamentals of Native American Indian bead weaving for authentic native clothing and jewelry. Carrie became adept at bead weaving, making countless moccasins and traditional Native American arts as well as contemporary native designs, but she longed for more. She wanted to have complete artistic freedom over every aspect of her intricate jewelry designs. The loom work and traditional stitches, while beautiful, were very restrictive. In looking for more sources for seed beads for loom work Carrie stumbled across a local bead store. Here she found rows and rows of tiny cups containing brightly colored glass beads of all shapes and sizes. She fell in love with the design possibilities that were available with the diverse range of colors, shapes and sizes of glass beads. For many years, while raising very active twin boys, she designed jewelry for small shows, friends and family. As she collected beads, lots and lots of beads, she noticed she was drawn to handmade lampwork beads due to the intricate color combinations and design possibilities.

In 2004 Carrie found a night course in beginning glass bead making at the local college that fit into her busy family’s schedule. It was there that she received instruction from Jackie Marr on the fundamentals of handmade (lampwork) glass bead creation. The loom went into storage that same night. Since then, mornings and weekends and any time the kids were not demanding her time, Carrie has developed her skills as a glass bead artist. Carrie specializes in portrait and product photography. She has deftly combined her love of jewelry creating and photography.

Ted Tahquechi

Ted Tahquechi is a legally blind photographer living in Santa Cruz, California. Ted has had low vision all his life. At an early age he lost the vision in his right eye. A car accident in 1999 robbed him of most of his remaining vision, 75% of the visual field in his left eye. After the accident Ted was unable to continue with his much loved career as a video game producer. In 2000, Ted moved into and restored his grandparent’s home in Santa Cruz, CA.  He fell in love with Santa Cruz, and began shooting pictures, first of the remodel then of the Santa Cruz area.

 

From an early age Ted loved photography, and took many classes in college on the subject. It was not until he found an old family album that he discovered that his grandfather was also in love with photography. Teds grandfather was also almost completely blind and suffered from, at the time, a rare eye disease called coats disease, the same disease that claimed Teds right eye.  From 2000 to 2005 Ted honed his photographic abilities and took every class he could on Photoshop and camera operation. In 2005 Ted seriously set his sights on shooting as a new career path.

 

Teds current project involves restoring his grandfather’s old photos, which were taken in the 1930’s and 40’s on a Kodak brownie camera, and developed at the kitchen table. Ted is combining the historic family photos with his own new photographs taken at the same locations.  The challenge of finding the same location the pictures were taken in over 70 years ago, has proven to be a labor of love.

 

Ted has always gravitated toward fields of occupation which are visually intensive; he worked successfully for 13 years in the video games industry and was employed by companies such as Atari, Accolade and Mattel Toys.  Now, with only 25% of his vision remaining in one eye, he has devoted himself to preserving historic photos and creating photographic art which everyone can enjoy. “I have never been one to let others tell me what I am able to accomplish” says Ted. “I believe that if you want to do something that you have to find a way to do it.” Ted has a website http://www.tahquechi.com which has galleries of his latest photographs as well as the “Then and Now” project which combines historic and current photographic images.