Interview: In Her Own Words

Like so many photographers, I started out with a little camera that I took with me everywhere. I think I was in grade school. Then, in junior high and high school, I got a 35mm film camera through a friend whose father was a photographer, and I worked for the school newspaper. I just loved to go out and take pictures of my neighborhood and the people.

More to the point, the camera gave me a vehicle to organize my world and give it meaning at that age. I was kind of shy, and the camera gave me a certain confidence to be able to talk to people. I think I still see the world that way —through the camera lens.

I was 20 when I began four years of an art and photography major at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. My first job in the profession was as an assistant to Neil Steinberg, the owner of Photoworks in Leesburg, Virginia. I worked for him for a year and gained commercial experience.

After that I went out on my own and opened up a little studio in our family’s store in the village of Lincoln, Virginia.  I freelanced as a wedding and portrait photographer and did documentary work, which is my true love.  A number of my favorite documentary images appear in the book In Their Own Words: Recollections of an Earlier Loudoun, which I published with writer Gale Waldron. From Lincoln, I've moved my studio four or five times— to Purcellville, Middleburg, and now Winchester. Virginia—but I also shoot on location.

Switching from film to digital photography was hard. I really liked film and had worked with it a long time. So, in 2005 I hired an assistant who had expertise in digital. I embraced it; there’s no question working with digital is more efficient and faster. And I don't think people can tell the difference if it's printed well.

Still, I love the larger format with film. As a photographer, I like to shoot film because it seems more luminous and has a softer quality for portrait work.  I just like the visceral quality of film, the tactile part. I do teach students in high school how to work with film. But whether they’re shooting digital or film, I focus their attention on what photography really is about: lighting, composition, and rapport with your subjects.