Photo by Kristine Palmer Photography.
One of the Instagram feeds we love to follow is that of Rhinebeck resident Carolyn Odell. Her daily photographs of our natural world are so consistently stunning that we were compelled to find out more about this gifted artist. A self-taught photographer, she is also a nurse for the Mid-Hudson Regional Hospital. But just about every minute she’s not caring for patients, she’s traveling throughout the Rural Intelligence region, capturing images with eyes that see things most of us don’t.
I used to do crafty things like knitting and crocheting, trying to find something that clicked. Then a friend gave me an SLR camera, and I became obsessed with it. Since 2010, I’ve been out shooting every day. I can take up to 500 photos a day. Trying to capture something different each time can be so frustrating, but even if I don’t get the shot I’m trying for, I get to witness these moments in nature.
I travel in my nursing job and will take pictures on my lunch hour wherever I am. Then as soon as I’m done with work I’ll go find a place to shoot before sunset. In the summer, I have to get up at 4 a.m. to get the sunrise, and the sunsets come so late that this is actually my downtime.
Ice glow.
Water is my favorite thing to photograph — waterfalls, reflections, river landscapes. I especially like to photograph ice. It’s like a frozen other world that seems to call out to me, even though I got frostbite three years in a row.
I’m doing something different this winter. Instead of putting a sharp focus on details, I’m trying to do blurred landscapes. Some of that is done by panning the camera or layering several photos on top of each other. I just have basic Photoshop so I don’t really do that much manipulation of the photos.
I’ve exhibited at a number of group and solo shows in Red Hook, Hudson and Poughkeepsie, and other places, and one of my photos was used as the cover photo for the Hudson River Regional Travel Guide last spring.
There’s no real time for much else. Photography is a priority for me. I feel like I’m on an artistic journey, and that something special is coming up. I try to capture a moment of serenity. If someone senses that, I feel like I’ve done my part. It’s my hope that in sharing my photos people will be inspired to seek out adventure, become aware of their surrounding and find their own visual stories.
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