Something started long ago, reignited.

I lived in western North Carolina when my marriage ended in 1996 and I became a single parent of a toddler while expecting a newborn. Those early years were lean, and to help make ends meet, I started selling notecards with some of my photos affixed to the front. I decided to call them 'Barbara's Views'. It was a modest endeavor - with about twenty different images. I was quite busy working, parenting, making a life for us, so it never went very far.

To build the best life possible for us, I made bold moves and didn't let geography stand in my way. We moved quite a bit, mostly for new job opportunities that would advance my career and provide more resources for the three of us. Progressively upsizing until we were able to own a home in the village of Dryden, NY near Cornell where the kids could each have their own bedrooms and have most of their schooling in one place until graduating high school.

Later as the kids launched into college and their futures, I thought it important to model following your heart, so I moved myself back to California, a place that I really loved living in my early twenties. For the past nine years, I have had the opportunity to work for two extra-ordinary institutions - The Planetary Society, founded by Carl Sagan and working for its current CEO Bill Nye, the Science Guy, and The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures (yes, related to the Oscars!)

Through it all, from North Carolina to Maine to DC to Virginia to upstate New York to New Jersey to California and now a return to Pennsylvania, I've carried hundreds of printed photos from that early business along with me. Even when I lived for a short while in a 400 sf former one-car garage apartment north of Glendale - with my two indoor cats and all of my earthly possessions, I did not let them go. I didn’t want to lose the creative dream and hoped to pick things up again, someday.

Now enjoying a self-imposed gap year from work, for the first time in decades I've had the luxury of time. Unpacking from this latest move, I came upon my boxes of photos, then my film negatives and the spark reignited.

Some of the original Barbara's Views cards, mostly taken on explorations throughout western NC pre-kids.

I'm delighted to launch 'Barbara's Views' again and hope you will enjoy looking through what I've captured with my lens. My new collection includes photos from the many places I've lived or visited in the past 30 years including some of my favorite views on the California Coast and with a deeper dive into my old negatives from my years in North Carolina.

I hope my photography invites you to pause, feel, and be transported to a place or to a memory and that you'll be inspired to buy some notecards or photo art prints for yourself or to give as gifts to someone you care about.