Photography by Teri Lou: What type of photos do you take?

I started taking photographs with a career of photography in mind in 2004. My goal was to capture images of the beautiful landscape so that people would want to purchase and hang them on their walls. In the summer of 2005 I had my first art show. I spent that whole summer traveling on weekends to various cities selling my wares from a 10' by 10' white tent booth. I learned a lot and made a few bucks to help pay for expenses. However what I remember most were two particular people who came in my booth. The first was a man from Ballard He quietly and methodically walked around the booth, carefully critiqing each photograph. When he was done, he looked me in the eye, said, "You're very good, don't ever quit." and walked away. The second person was from Mill Creek, he too slowly walked around the booth looking at each photo, smiling at various ones said, "Thank you, I don't get to travel and you just gave me an opportunity to see things I never would have otherwise."

These two comments I really took to heart. The first one gave me confidence in my work that I didn't have before. The second made me realize that I have other purposes as a photographer.

Many people ask me what type of photographs I take landscape, weddings, portraits? My answer is that I have taken them all and the only type I don't prefer at this time is product photography. The opportunities in photography are so broad when capturing the image but when you really want to talk about a vast array of options start mentioning the processing side of things.

Today's image is simply a photograph of cows standing at a fence. They were very curious and conveniently all lined up wanting to see what I had in my hand offering to them. My offering was a 12mm lens as close up to them as I could reach. This is a fun photograph that I processed first in Lightroom and then finished by adding Topaz Adjust and Detail filters in CS4. I installed the Topaz Labs product on my laptop today. Is this an image that people want to hang on their walls? Most likely not. Is it a photograph with another purpose? Yes I believe it is.