About

Asheville Commercial Photographer Deborah Wolfe

Facts.

I am Deborah Wolfe and I have had a camera in my hands since I was 9 years old. I ran a successful commercial and portrait studio in the Atlanta area for more than 20 years. I am now happily based out of the Asheville, NC area. That is my picture.

Fancy.

I grew up in a dry county, in a very small town in rural north Alabama that was named after a bootlegger that sold a ‘scant’ fifth of liquor. I learned to drive when I was 12 years old. I have the dubious distinction of having once ‘clipped’ the local bootlegger with the mirrors on my daddy’s old pickup truck. I knocked him into the ditch and kept right on driving. I thought he was foolin’ around. He wasn’t. He has long since disappeared into the witness protection program. I don’t think it had anything to do with my runnin’ him over.

I have loved crows my whole life. I speak ‘crow’, only I don’t have any idea what I’m saying. All I know is they leave when I ‘talk’ to them. I have a hard time resisting picking up any bug I see. Frogs too. They pee on you, but if you’re prepared for that eventuality, you can hold ‘em away from you til they’ve done the deed.

I have a pigeon ‘problem’. Ask me sometime, in person, and I might tell you about it. Or not. Could fall into the category of ‘you had to be there.’

I pick up things when I’m out and about. Rocks. Interesting sticks. Seed pods. Shells. I have a collection of rocks I’ve drug with me across the country and back. Rocks are heavy, therefore expensive to ship. It’s forced me to make tough choices.

None of this has anything to do with photography. I’m always trying to figure out how ‘professional’ to act. I figure I’m good at what I do, and that’s all that matters. That, and I’m good to my Mama. I mean, the proof is in the pudding, as they say. Photography is, after all, a visual medium. Either you like what you see, or you don’t.

But I can tell you that I am crazy about photography. I can’t remember ever not being crazy about it. I think about imagery in my head all the time. I’m always taking pictures, whether I have a camera or not. And don’t even get me started on bokeh. I love me some bokeh and think its high time somebody started a program on public tv called ‘Bokeh Time’. I have to challenge myself not to take my camera out, because I’m always worrying I’m not really being IN the world, that I’m just observing and obsessively set designing it.

If I had to categorize my work, I would say I specialize in slurpy, saturated color – texture that jumps off the wall at you – clean, crisp lines and detail. I have worked with some pretty big companies and corporations, but I also really enjoy working with small, independent businesses and artisans who want to give a little more pizazz to their marketing images. I’m really good with people too, and as long as I’m not too hungry, I don’t even get snappish most of the time.

I have a confession to make…

After decades of working as a photographer for hire, I’m kinda tired of dragging all that equipment around with me. So rather than re-writing this entire ‘bio’ page (which I think turned out right nice and I was in a flow state when I wrote it after all….) I thought I’d just confess that I’m not really so much into the commercial photography thing anymore.

I am much more interested in pursuing my own artistic endeavors at this time, such as fine art photography, mixed media art and digital collage.

However, if somebody wants to pay me a scandalous amount of money to drag the equipment out, I’ll be happy to hoof it your way. Maybe. A year’s supply of Kit Kat’s could sweeten the deal.

But, until then…

There’s only so many words to go around, so here’s an image collage of really random things that interest me or have caught my eye…friends, family, pages out of my sketch books, travel snaps etc