Nancy C. Nelson
“To see, we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at.”
- Claude Monet
Photography is my retirement hobby, which I started in late 2017. This was a wonderful time to graduate from my point-and-shoot camera to the miracle of modern digital cameras and lenses. Combining this gear with amazing post-processing software lets me emphasize trying to capture and share the wonder of what I see, rather than wrestling with the mysteries of camera settings and developing film. There is always something new to learn, whether about birds, my camera, or processing and printing my images. Being a photographer resonates with many of my personal values: learning, adventure and connection.
I came to photography as a birdwatcher and naturalist. My original goal was to create guidebook-style images, with the bird in profile on a limb, and every feather in perfect focus. Now I’m more interested in showing you the daily life of a bird, whether it is feeding its young, taking a bath, or tossing a berry in the air before eating it. I hope to motivate you to get outdoors, to pay attention to what you are seeing, and to actively support the preservation of habitat for the animals we share this planet with.
In my past life, I earned Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Fisheries from the University of Washington in Seattle. For twelve years I was a biologist for the USFWS, followed by more than three decades of self-employment as a fee-only financial planner. I live with my husband Dan Fender in two of the most beautiful places in the world: Olympia, Washington and San Rafael de Heredia, Costa Rica.