I can’t believe I’ve only ever talked about my friend Maya once on the blog before. Maya recently (like ten minutes ago) joined Flickr and you can see some of her work by clicking above. I met Maya waaay back in 2002 or so when she was a customer at my store and dropping off the odd roll of film here and there with some stunning images on them. I later hired her to work for me. She’s an energetic free spirit, having lived in Toronto and Vancouver (and soon New York City!) in the last couple years. In addition to being a stellar photographer, she’s also a fantastic model and actress, which means I’ll have to shoot her again before she heads down south. And now that I have a new Nikon D300s with HD video, maybe she can be my guinea pig for some video experiments too.

What has impressed me most about Maya’s photos over the years is her ability to do so much with so little. She started out with the most basic of basic digital SLRs and has very minimal amounts of lighting gear. She shot many of her photos in her Vancouver apartment (screw you, expensive studios) and makes trips to the thrift store part of her everyday life. Maya even has a blog devoted to her frugal ways: Frugal Artist.

To see more photos, check out Maya’s website.