Local photographer Kayla Marie highlights the planet’s natural beauty with her shots of beaches, sunsets, mountains

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Growing up in Pismo Beach, a young Kayla Marie would watch the sunset from her balcony every night. At the age of 9, she received her first camera as a gift from her father.

“My dad saw me out there watching all the time,” Marie said. “He decided to get me a camera and told me to start taking pictures. It became a passion. From that moment on, I didn’t stop.”

Marie has since been snapping pictures across Santa Barbara County for decades. Rather than shooting people or objects, she photographs landscapes. Her portfolio includes beaches, mountains, fields, skies, hills, natural parks, and more. 

Her images of the pastel pink, yellow, and purple flowers in Lompoc provide a rich contrast to the bright blue sky and vibrant green plants, while highlighting the white of the clouds just enough to draw attention to the shaded mountain silhouettes on the horizon.

At sunset, Marie captures skies of such bright orange and yellow they look like they’re on fire.

As a photographer, Marie prioritizes color in her photos and balances the bright and the subtle. Even when she’s photographing hillsides, she’ll find a yellow flower or an orange leaf for the perfect pop of distinction among her landscapes. 

“Those iPhones can do great work, but not as great as an actual, professional camera,” Marie said. “I use Canons most of the time, but I also have a Sony camera. I like to switch. It depends on what I’m shooting.”

Marie said she currently uses a Canon EOS 6D Mark II camera to photograph sunsets. For portrait shots, she said she grabs her Sony Alpha 7 II.

As someone who has photographed across the Central Coast, Marie isn’t a photographer who plans out her schedule months at a time. Instead, she said, her gut tells her when she needs to get out of town and go take pictures.

“I just start looking up places I haven’t been before and try to make a fun little trip,” Marie said.

When shooting, Marie is especially careful to ensure she takes more pictures than she needs. She said she sometimes takes the same picture more than 50 times just to make sure she got the shot. 

Just as she did as a child in Pismo, Marie still constantly watches the sky, waiting for pretty sunsets. During a given shoot, she said she usually takes anywhere between 500 and 1,000 photos. 

Always trying to capture the right mood, Marie wears headphones while she photographs. She said she’ll sometimes correspond her Instagram posts of her photographs with the songs she was listening to when she took them. 

Her music taste varies. Whether it’s pop, punk, country, rap, or techno, Marie said she listens to whatever she feels in the moment when taking pictures. She said she listened to Morgan Wallen’s “Smile” while capturing photos off Highway 46 recently.

After photographing, it’s time to edit. Marie said one of her favorite aspects of being a photographer is the nearly unlimited number of different lenses and editing techniques she gets to choose from to accentuate her pictures.

“It’s not just about shooting the photo,” she said “It’s about the hours spent behind the computer editing. You can’t do that with an iPhone. The quality won’t be the same.”

After she photographs, Marie compiles her collection of pictures and carefully inspects the most minute details of each picture, individually. From the hundreds of pictures she usually takes during a given shoot, Marie finds about 50 to 100 she likes best. Those are the pictures she edits. 

Marie said she tries not to play with the color of her photos too much while editing. Instead, she said she focuses on trying to highlight as many fine details as she can.

“A lot of people mess with the color too much, and it makes the quality go down,” Marie said. “I like my pictures to be kind of as is. I try to make sure what I’m capturing already has a lot of color in it. I do a lot more editing on photo shoots, but, when it comes to my landscapes, I’m only going to touch a few things up.”

Marie said the 50 to 100 pictures she compiles usually take her about two to three hours to edit, noting that she’s spent up to six hours editing in the past. 

As a mother of two young children, Marie said the patience she’s learning while raising them has made her a more patient photographer and more careful editor. As someone with a tendency to occasionally be a homebody, she said photography provides a nice push to get outside when she feels like snuggling on the couch. 

Of all the places she’s been to photograph, Marie said Kauai and Yosemite are her two favorites.

“I usually go to Yosemite multiple times a year,” she said. “It’s so beautiful. There’s no way you can get a bad picture.”

Marie doesn’t just take pictures for herself. She said she’s also done photography work for companies’ social media pages, engagements, weddings, showers, and family photo shoots.

“She takes somewhat of a whimsical approach,” Marie’s friend Luke Tyree, himself a 13-year photography veteran, said. “Instead of saying ‘I’m here to do a job,’ she’s more like, ‘Let’s just see what materializes once I get out there.’ She may go in with an idea of what she’s looking for, but she lets the environment speak to her once she’s out there.”

Marie and Tyree became friends during the pandemic when they would get together to go on photography shoots. Tyree said Marie is always happy to share her expertise with the next generation. He recalled the time a couple of years ago when he and Marie brought a couple of kids onto West Cuesta Ridge for an impromptu photo session. 

“The majority of the work I see Kayla put out is just kind of an extension of her personality and the things that bring her joy,” Tyree said. “She’s a resilient person who is good at taking accountability when she needs to and can be assertive when it’s appropriate.”

Share your creative passion with Staff Writer Reece Coren at rcoren@santamariasun.com.

This article appears in Jun 19-29, 2025.