Playing in the Palisades

A Photographer’s View of Our Local Parks

After Maral Kirschenmann moved into her home on Paseo Miramar in 1988, her photographs began exploding with the endlessly fascinating, ever-changing natural environment around her: the moods of the Pacific, the subtleties of the chaparral, and the critters. “Most of my challenges have to do with weather, light and timing,” says Maral, who’ despite an expertise that goes way beyond the amateur’s’considers her photography a hobby. Not really untrained, Maral minored in cinema at USC, and after she graduated with a business degree she continued to take courses in film, concentrating on the directing. “Framing became my interest, which carried over into my photography,” Maral says. Whether she is using her digital Canon Elf or her Pentax 1st-D (for which she can use the assortment of lenses she acquired for her old Pentax film camera) she is constantly taking pictures. At the end of each year, she selects the best work from each camera and creates a slide show for her family and friends. While her interest in the natural world is ceaseless, Maral has an affinity for photographing children, which she says is probably the hardest thing to do. “Fortunately, I am blessed with a daughter who is photogenic and allows me to shoot her. I seem to be really good with kids.” Her daughter Aran, 9-1/2, is a student at Calvary Christian School in the Highlands. Photographing birds is actually quite predictable, she says. “You give them the right food and setting and they’ll come and pose for you, flutter. And having an artistic eye, I can go from there.” Maral would like to do a book of her photographs someday. “Maybe a book on the views of the Palisades or the Westside, as a release for my artistic side. What I’d really like to see is an art gallery in the Palisades, and I think a great spot would be in that space right across the courtyard from Blockbuster [the former location of Contentment].” Maral was raised in a family in which you became a banker, a doctor or a lawyer. “I was a banker for years, now I’m more interested in doing something with my art.” She and her husband, Lon, have just finalized a film script that they have been working on for the past five years. Now in the hands of CAA, the story concerns the adventures of two young girls in the Cancun jungles. For now, though, Maral says that her real estate development firm continues to pay the bills.