It’s always great fun when Karen Messick comes down from Baltimore to speak or judge for us. Not to mention that we learn a lot! Once, she even brought music to accompany her classic car shots. This month, Karen’s back, and we’ll see what she thinks of our efforts in the open-topic competition.

With a free-wheeling, wildly creative spirit, Karen has been photographing for over 20 years and has the awards to show for her work. She says that photography has always been part of her life, though she didn’t take a serious interest in the camera until she began travelling. In 1997, she signed up for her first photography workshop, then took the digital leap about nine years later and got a Mac for post-processing. Karen notes, “I enjoy being behind the viewfinder where every other thought in the world disappears, trying to capture the most beautiful image possible.”

Karen is known for her expertise in a number of styles and techniques and wins high praise for her design sense and her artful composition. Besides traditional photography, she embraced HDR (of the tasteful variety) early on and also takes pleasure in creating artistic adaptations of her images with plug-in software. She has become widely known for her striking iPhone photography.

As an educator, Karen has led photo workshops throughout the mid-Atlantic as well as in New Mexico, Washington state, Spain, France, Italy, and Ireland. She teaches introduction to digital photography and also iPhone photography at the Johns Hopkins Odyssey program and is a lead instructor for the Capital Photography Center in DC. In addition, Karen has lectured on composition and design during FotoWeek in DC, on macro and impressionism at the Nature Visions Expo in Virginia, and on iPhoneography at the Horizon Photography Summit in Delaware. Always interested in refining her abilities, Karen has taken workshops with quite a few well known professional photographers, especially on the topic of nature.

Karen has written instructional articles and had portfolio pieces published in iPhoneLife Magazine and Nature Photographer Magazine. Currently, she is a field contributor for Nature Photographer and online for the iPhone Photography School. Her stock iPhone images are available for purchase through Aurora.

At present, Karen has her work on display at Bass Fine Art Gallery in Seattle and at More Than Fine Framing in Ruxton, MD. Her images have also been shown in various festivals, galleries, museums, and shops in our area as well as in and around Seattle. The University of Maryland, Baltimore County Campus, holds some of Karen’s work in their photography collection.

You can learn more about Karen and explore her work at: http://www.karenlmessickphotography.com/-/karenlmessickphotography/.