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I remember picking up my grandfather's camera when I was young. Shooting anything in my parent's yard. My uncle further encouraged me to photograph - handing me a camera and an endless amount of film to 'play with'. After college, I moved to the Pacific Northwest and continued to capture landscapes while spending time outside in the mountains or on the water. However, I was never seriously into photography, yet. Perhaps the cost and the time was too much at that point in my life. I moved back to Texas in 2002. After a few dry years of absolutely no landscape photography, I started to pick up the camera again. I'll admit, I was a bit depressed with the landscape around me (DFW area), but eventually found areas of Texas that I enjoyed photographing. In 2009, I found myself at a friend's ranch in West Texas, looked up, and without a tripod, placed my camera down on the driveway to see what it could capture. At the time, I knew nothing about shooting at night. From there, it really became an obsession to learn and do more. - - Photographing the night sky is both humbling and fascinating to me. It brings a sense of empowerment to be in total darkness, usually in the middle of nowhere, stay up most of the night, and photography our galaxy. My problems ultimately feel minuscule compared to what is in front of me. I was once very afraid of being in the middle of nowhere in the dark. Now, I find it one of the most amazing sights, especially in a dark sky. There's an entirely different world out there at night. While it might be harder to see, I think our other senses pick up the slack. The sounds, the smells, the feeling of the breeze in the night - they all are very different in their own beautiful way. I do offer workshops for night sky photography, mostly at Big Bend National Park and surrounding areas. I consider myself a lifelong learner of photography. -Shari |