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Photographer and fine artist Stephanie Roberts is well-known to the Blogher community for her unique perspective as an audio journalist. She's spent the last few Blogher conferences making sure you hear the deeper stories from speakers and attendees alike. What you might not know is that Stephanie is making deep forays into the world of art, a place she knows well from her family ties as well as her own journey. Take a minute to learn how Stephanie came to make this turn back to her roots as a fine arts photographer and storyteller.
I know you've been thinking about narrowing the focus of your blog for awhile now. What prompted your decision to change the format?
I started my first blog, "Cool People I Know," more than two years ago. I created that space initially to shine a light on cool people doing interesting things in the form of short essays and audio interviews. As the blog evolved, I began to enjoy the creative process of asking questions and playing with words so much that I began to turn my focus inwardly – exploring and sharing my own life observations. Writing became a near daily (late night) practice and getting reconnected to the artist side of myself became a critical creative outlet for me.
During the past two years, I've loved connecting with creative bloggers (many through BlogHer)... artists, photographers and creative writers... and those relationships continued to inspire and really fuel my creativity. I found that my focus expanded into poetry, the creation of a collaborative life list wiki and digital video vignettes, and ultimately on my return to photography with the purchase of a digital SLR one year ago. Just as a traditional artist likes to try different forms of media to continue to grow and evolve, I explored different methods of digital media to express myself creatively.
As I spent more and time looking through life with my new lens, I found that the process of crafting my posts was shifting. Initially, I'd craft my post using words and then select an image to support my concept. But the more I shot, the more my images began to lead the thought process behind my posts. I found that the words began to take a supportive role and that "Cool People I Know" as a canvas actually limited my ability to really focus on photography. So on July 9th, I retired that blog and launched LittlePurpleCow Photography (using Squarespace) – a photoblog and online portfolio of my images.
Your photographs are so exquisite which should not surprise me one bit, but I was really taken back in your bio by what a strong background you have in art--both in your family history and your personal experience. Is this focus on photography a continuing thread for you or do you feel like you are in the process of reclaiming a part of yourself that got lost along the way?
Thank you so much. Photography (and art that straddles left- and right-brain thought) has indeed been a continuing thread, and yes, I am finally reclaiming a part of myself that got lost along the way.
Photography first clicked for me at the age of seven when Santa Claus left a Kodak point-and-shoot under the tree for me. It was the best gift I had ever received and I took it with me everywhere. I'd create compositions with my friends at school during recess and remember getting swept up in my own world as I studied the Statue of Liberty through my tiny viewfinder. Years later, I convinced my mother to share her Polaroid and saved up my allowance to purchase my own film cartridges. At that time, though, I was primarily focused on traditional art – drawing, painting, pastels and pen & ink.
My love of photography renewed when I received a 35mm Minolta SLR during my senior year in high school. I had planned to attend the University of Georgia as a Scientific Illustration major, but kept up with photography as a hobby. Thanks to a photography class with Dr. Robert Nix at UGA, I discovered that photography was in fact a form of fine art. I continued to shoot and develop black and white prints from my SLR and a pinhole camera made of balsa wood, while I carefully illustrated insects and animals with painstaking detail. Following graduation, I took a left turn and became submerged in a career of
