Horses:
In love with horses since I was a young girl, I am still horse crazy and get excited at just the sight of a horse trailer. Some of the best times in my life have been spent with horses. For 23 years I rode my spirited and trustworthy Arabian gelding for miles in a beautiful Florida park, featuring oak trees with Spanish moss, cypress swamps, wild deer and bald eagles nests. I always looked forward to going riding and the friends I made at the barn are still my best friends.
A horticulturist, I really enjoy photographing plants and lowers and was reluctant to photograph horses because I was afraid I could not do them justice.
Several years ago I went to horse shows to practice my horse photography. I went almost every weekend during the show season and took thousands of photos and studied how the light fell on the horse and the best angles from which to photograph.
It is from these hours and hours of watching horses that I developed my timing and skill. I have a deep passion for horses and I know how they react and behave. It is my love of the horse and understanding of them that I hope will come through in my photographs.I
Flowers
In 1998, I started a landscaping business and my passion for tropical plants and flowers was ignited. I often went to botanical gardens to photograph plants and later had one plant or flower photo a week published in the Daytona News-Journal in a little column called Florida Flora. Having to submit one photo a week for almost two years, I was always looking for new and exciting plants to photograph. I also wrote a garden column for the newspaper.
Eventually, my collection of tropical plants grew, and frequent trips to nurseries in the West Palm Beach area only wetted my appetite for more. In the beginning, I would fill up my car to the brim with beautiful rare and exotic specimens. Later I bought a van and would bring home tropicals for my customers as well as to add to my collection.
After about eight years of photographing flowers, I got bored and started to experiment. I first used a white background and then a black background. I quickly tired of this and then began using whatever I had around the house- a rug, a placemat or a blanket as background material.
Typical of many artists who become obsessive about their art, I then started to look for more interesting fabrics to use as backgrounds, scouring thrift stores for vintage fabrics and clothing, and buying yards of fabric from fabric stores.
I also collect unusual and colorful containers to put my flowers in and often experiment with a lens called Lensbaby, which works similar to a large format camera in that you can selectively focus. This creates one-of-a kind images that stand out.
My goal today is to create flower images that are totally unique- images that no one else can duplicate. In a market that is over saturated with flower photography, I have found my own bold and creative style.
A graduate of Daytona State College with an associate's in photography, I am also a writer.
Her other website:
Writer Chris Weigl.com
In a perfect world:
If I had all the time and money I could want, my days would be filled on a quest for beauty.
I would seek out beautiful places, places I have always dreamed of- New Zealand, Bali, the Amazon Rain Forest and the Grand Canyon.
I would seek out beautiful flowers - tropical plants with bold colors, conservatories with exotic specimens and palms, and fields of wildflowers.
I would seek out beautiful horses, Arabians, Adalusians, Friesians and wild mustangs.
Why I take photographs:
When I am photographing something truly beautiful- a gorgeous flower, a free-spirited horse, a landscape in the golden hour of daylight- I am lost in that moment. Everything else that was in my mind- vanishes.
Those moments when I can lose myself, when all sense of time disappears- these are the moments I live for. These are the reasons I photograph.
Often I will photograph a flower for one or two hours. I will examine it from every angle, in different light, with different backgrounds. I will ask myself, “What can I do to make it even more beautiful?”
After the photo is taken, again I will ask the same question. I will try to enhance it with digital imaging software. And strive to make it different – to make it my own.
Color plays a huge role in my photographs. There is no such thing as too yellow or too orange or too pink. The more extreme the color, the more excited I get.
Artist Objective:
To create beauty
To shock
To suprise
To awe
To bring joy
To escape realty
To test the limits of what is possible
To create something crazy, bold and different
Thought for the day:
Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams.
-- Ashley Smith