About
Statement
Out on the trail in my native Arizona home, I capture photographs of nature in glorious quiet settings. I hope they inspire people to experience God's creation from the deserts to the pines! I enjoy sharing majestic horses, my animated pups, and people on the land. Most folks in my path have been cattle raisers and Native Americans.Biography
In Laura's last year at Arizona State University, before graduating in Theater, she took a History of Photography class with a photo developing lab. It was time to transition from seven years working in fashion modeling and Laura happily bought a camera on a summer job in Montana. She began recording the beauty she saw on the viewers side of the camera.Laura was forever enamored …watching her images of cows, horses and scenery appear in the tray of chemicals! A turning point came when she visited the stables where the Budweiser Clydesdales were getting a bath before their performance. She took a photograph from a low vantage point of the geldings fluffy white stocking and the water spraying halfway up to its belly.
Like Dorothy walking up to the great “OZ,” Laura approached the Arizona Republic Newspaper and asked to sell the photograph to an editor. After a few polite “No’s at the reception desk, the Metropolitan editor appeared with a smile. He offered her $25 for the photograph (an appealing sum in 1980) and she began a weekly job turning in a roll of Tri-X 400 black and white film.
As Laura headed out into the work world and guiding horseback rides throughout the west, she found newspapers who published her outdoor-based photo-essays. Later she worked on cattle ranches; her favorite being the Texas Longhorn cattle and she wrote regular articles for the Arizona Cattle Growers publication and several newspapers and magazines.
While the beauty of nature, wildlife and scenery are fulfilling, an underlying hope is a project Laura works on, to see the return of sheep, goats and cattle grazing in the northern Arizona mountains and neighborhoods. She sees the positive, proactive management of controlled burns and yet the benefit of seasonal livestock grazing in the forest lands from Mayer to Skull Valley. She daily walks and rides deep in the Bradshaw Mountain range, witnessing the abundant grass and chapparal that flourish in-between burns. Thus, there would be reduced fire danger and a provision of meat and by products, per chance supplies dwindle during an emergency in Yavapai County.
Laura has enjoyed the immense education from her grandparents who ranched in Castle Hot Springs, Arizona, the families she worked for in Payson, friends in Kirkland, and the Native Americans; Apache, Navajo, Lakota, and Yavapai, who all wisely care for the land.
Aƞpétu kiƞ lé taƞyáƞ máni yó/ye. (Lakota; Walk well today!)
