About Me

Photography was not my first artistic passion. I loved to paint and draw, especially horses. Like many artists, drawing people was something I had difficulty mastering. I would often create paintings or drawings from images I saw in magazines and I would be told that my art was not original. So, I thought maybe I would just take my own photographs then. I was introduced to photography in High School. I fell in love with the medium and the darkroom. I started taking pictures of anything and everything having to do with horses. Then I moved on to my theater friends experimenting with abstract lighting. Pushing and pulling exposures and processing. I soon started taking head shots for all my theater friends and capturing horse show pictures for my farm buddies. I realized studying people through the lens actually made my figure drawings better. I also found my eye for composition became stronger.

I stuck with film photography well after digital SLR cameras became available. I was given a small Nikon Coolpix digital camera that was only 2.5 megapixels as a gift one Christmas. Considering the early technology, it still created some pretty nice photos. I finally bought a Nikon D70 since I could still use my film lens, again only 6.1 megapixels but I captured some beautiful images. Still photographing people, I began to explore other subjects like macro images of flowers and insects. As I started getting more serious about photography, I upgraded to a D700 and invested in some nicer portrait and macro lenses. At this point I started exhibiting my work, won a few awards, and made quite a few sales with my floral and macro work.

In 2013 my daughter was born. She has become the subject of most my photography since then, although I still photograph horses regularly. Izzy was the focus of a photography project for school a couple of years ago along with a few digital art projects. She and I started raising butterflies when COVID first kept us at home and re-found my passion for photographing insects. Thank you for taking the time to read about my photographic journey and look through some of my work.

- Colleen Elise