© Annie Omens

Meet San Diego-based photographer and APA member, Annie Omens. Annie is a photographic and mixed media artist who explores the natural world with a conscious perception of what is hidden, what is known, and how nature impacts the human psyche.

What 3 words best describe your photography style? 
Detailed, mystical, layered.

What inspires you? 
I am inspired by nature and am always challenged to reveal what might be hidden beneath the surface.

What’s your favorite thing about being a photographic artist?
I enjoy working with mixed media but love the immediacy of photography.

When you aren’t making photographs, what other pastimes do you have?
I love riding horses and walking my dogs in nature.

Who have been your biggest influences?
In college, my teacher, Fred Endsley influenced me by “seeing me” and encouraging me. Currently, Aline Smithson has inspired and supported me as a mentor.

What was the best piece of advice you were given starting out? 
Be yourself and keep going (don’t quit).

What are the current challenges that you face as a photographer?
For me, learning and keeping up with social media is challenging.

What have been some of the highlights and challenges of your career so far?
The challenge has always been the business part- writing, marketing, and social media. A recent highlight has been being part of a collective of women photographers and showing with them nationally.

What were you doing before you became a photographer?
Wondering how to make a living in photography. Haha. I was considering graduate school. I was substitute teaching in a public school system, and then assisting a big-name photographer. I was getting little jobs in photography that wet my appetite, putting me on a path of knowing what I wanted to do. I just didn’t know how to get there. Being an assistant opened up my eyes to the business of photography, and sort of pointed me in a direction.

If you weren’t a Photographer, what would you be doing?
I have been a fine artist my whole life, and since that did not pay the bills, and, I loved to travel, I worked as a flight attendant for many years.

What do you do when you get stuck?
Don’t force anything, take a break.

What is a photographer’s role now that technology has made it so much more accessible to the masses? 
It’s important to understand what a good photograph is in artistic terms.  Knowing about composition, color, or tone, line, scale, texture, light, etc., allows you to convey what you want to express with the most impact.

In response to the current technology, in the fine art world, there seems to be a return to alternative methods of photography by going back to film and crafting an image physically by hand instead of on the computer. It’s also exciting to see how photographers are redefining what a photograph is by printing on different substrates, and displaying them in unique ways or working with mixed media.

Check out more work from Annie Omens.