By Jillian Lauren Collett, Correspondent
Article Launched: 02/06/2007 08:10:53 PM PST
Photography has always been a part of the life of Linnea Lenkus.
She received her first camera from her father when she was just 7. It was a Kodak Instamatic that she keeps at her Pasadena studio to this day.
"I had no vision then. I was just trying to press the shutter," she said, laughing at the memory.
After graduating from high school, Linnea took a job at JC Penney's Kinderphoto.
"I was so proud to get that job," she said. "I was so gung ho and wanted to learn. I really learned how to get kids to do what I wanted for the camera. It's not forcing them, its getting on their level and understanding who they are."
Those lessons - as well as two years as a photo fashion model ("I was too gawky for the runway," she said) - helped Lenkus develop as a photographer who specializes in family portraits. Her style focuses on unique aspects of families. She doesn't like to do the static, sit-together-and-smile-at-the-camera poses.
"Doing a standard portrait is boring to me," Lenkus said. "I don't like perfect."
Arranged along the walls of her Pasadena studio are portraits packed with warmth and elegance. The faces have emotion; even their postures show individual personality.
One is of a man with his face pressed against the bare belly of his pregnant wife. Another shows four young boys, obviously brothers, piled on top of each other.
An early photo of Lenkus's son Dexter (now 4) as an infant shows his bare bottom facing the camera.
She always had an idea how people should look in photos, even when she was a model for Wilhelmina West in Los Angeles, and the Paris Planning agency in Paris.
"I lived in Europe," she said. "I modeled in Munich and then I went home. I loved Europe, but I didn't like modeling."
"I don't want people over me. I want to do it my own way."
In 1998, they returned to L.A. She currently operates studios in Pasadena and Long Beach; she plans to open another soon in Irvine.
She has clients who come as far as Hawaii, Australia and China for family portraits.
"I want to give them something unique and different," she said.
The photos she takes of her own children captures that ideology. One portrait of her 2-and-a-half-year-old twins Ava and Maxwell show them in an embrace.
"My twins love to kiss each other," Lenkus said.
Her psychology major in college turned out to be good training for the style of photography she was aiming for.
"I have always wanted to know what makes people tick," Lenkus said. "It is what a psychologist does, and it's what I do. If you can find the beauty in someone who has their walls up, then you've done your job."
She liked to spend time talking with the photographers at shoots.
"I started telling photographers how I wanted things done," Lenkus said.
She moved back to Los Angeles and studied psychology at Cal State Northridge, but by the time she graduated, Lenkus realized she wanted to be a photographer.
"I think I knew it before that, but I was very shy and didn't think I could do it," she said. "I was young and didn't have faith in myself."
One of the hardest things for her has been "not trying to be what everyone thinks you should be," she said. "(They tell you) you should do this, and you should do that. But in the end, it all comes down to trusting myself."
In 1989, Lenkus opened her first studio with two other photographers in Los Angeles. Later, she moved to Seattle with her husband, Chris Robinson, to open her own studio. By that time, she was confident.
"I am really forceful about my vision," she said.
