About Laura
Call me Eclectic…
I’m a motorcycle riding, free-spirited, animal loving……geek?!?! That is how my friends describe me when I asked them. A little different than my clients - hah!
I grew up on a farm.
I’ve never met an animal I couldn’t fall in love with.
I’m the girl who has drug home every stray she’s ever come across.
Nowadays, I have miniature horses, Onyx the cat, Maple the Holland Lop, and lots and lots of African cichlid fish (I’ll spare the name list, but they have one). And don’t forget all the backyard critters (deer, raccoons, gray fox, feral cats, chipmunks, and a very chunky groundhog - or two) . Yes, I can’t help myself. I have to “help” the wildlife have a nice dinner every night, too. I would have one of everything if I could. And believe me, you’ll know if I ever win the lottery. I’m an animal lover through and through.
No, I don’t have any of my own human children. But, yes, I do love kids. Not having them just makes photographing yours that much more special for me!
I love to read.
I geek out on horror movies (especially 80s B-movies - I’m all about those practical effects).
I love Pokemon and cute, bug eyed, chibi animals in general.
I also do a lot of biking and running, mostly to ward off side effects of my dead pancreas (Type One diabetes, 36 years and counting).
I can often be found in antique and craft stores.
I paint, draw, and do graphic design work as a side hustle. I even wrote my own children’s book!
Why Photography?
I didn’t always know I wanted to be a photographer, but I did always know I wanted to be an artist. It was between that or becoming a storm chaser, but I wanted to be able to pay the bills, so I chose to be an artist. Nobody told me about the whole “starving artist” thing until it was too late. Thankfully everything has worked out for me….19 years in business and counting!
I’ve always been drawn to photographs. As a kid, I loved flipping through old albums, “meeting” relatives who passed long before my time and reliving moments from my own early years - those fuzzy memories from when I was too young to truly remember.
I got my first camera around the age of eight and took as many photos as I could get away with - limited only by the cost of film and my parents' patience. My aunt was also passionate about photography, and some of my favorite memories as a teenager were our long drives through Amish Country, cameras in hand, chasing beautiful scenes together. When I declared photography as my college major, no one was surprised.
But during college, everything changed. I went through a traumatic experience: I lost my horse, my best friend. The night before the accident, I’d taken some photos of him. In the aftermath, those photos became everything to me. There’s something incredibly powerful about being able to hold on to someone, whether human or animal, through a photograph after they are gone. That kind of healing is unlike anything else. Those images were all I had left, and I cherished them more than anything I owned.
That was the moment it clicked. I knew what I needed to do. Until then, I had never photographed a person, but from that day on, I never stopped.