Heather's original home is nestled in the mountains of northern Alaska, nearly 100 miles past the Arctic Circle. For nearly two decades her family lived isolated, without roads, running water, electricity, computers, and generators 70, miles from the nearest town. As an adult, Heather has chosen to divide her time between her families homestead in Alaska, and her home in Sonoma County, California, where she was raised after her family left the Arctic. Heather's first memories are connected with photography, as her father and mother were documentary film makers in the same arctic valley. Heather has been playing with cameras for as long as she can remember, but only recently (after much nagging by her beloved grandma) took her photography seriously in a public way. Heather considers her work artistic, documentary, and deeply personal. Each image she creates is an intimate expression of the present moment and draws on her knowledge of photography, her feelings, and life experiences. Heather shoots with digital Nikon SLR's with zoom and medium to wide angle lenses. She also works with an assortment of patched up tripods whose plastic parts constantly snap at thirty degrees below zero Fahrenheit. She welcomes anyone who wants to give her a tripod that can handle crashing through ice on a dogsled at negative twenty degrees, or shooting Northern Lights at forty five below for more than a month --and doesn’t weigh 100 lbs. Heather uses Photoshop to develop RAW images. Although she respects the amazing creative possibilities that Photoshop offers, she has chosen to use Photoshop in its simplest form. She uses her digital darkroom to help recreate what she saw through her lens. She does not believe in unnaturally saturating colors, using creative filters, changing, or manipulating the image without first telling the viewer. This includes the Northern Lights photographs. Heather’s work has been shown in the East Bay, Southern CA, and in Humboldt County, CA. She is currently showing at a fine arts gallery in Fairbanks, Alaska named YaYa’s and at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Sebastopol, CA. Heather also uses her photography and her parent’s film, Year of the Caribou, in educational workshops and talks for all ages. |