Spirit of Aloha | Features | May/June 2007

LAURA FOWLER
The Vision

I like to record the beauty of Hawai‘i as it exists at a specific instance, and prefer not to use digital manipulation. I’ll hike through a storm to photograph raindrops on a fern, or journey to a special place before sunrise and wait for the light. Recently the windward side of O‘ahu was engulfed by a curtain of rain, and even flooding, but I traveled to a pre­viously scouted location and waited for a break in the storm. When the clouds parted for an instant, I was able to capture the sun lighting a waterfall in every valley of the Ko‘olau mountain range. My photographs of leaves and flowers demonstrate my attention to detail and dedication to composition. I spend hours creating compositions that emphasize certain unusual colors, lines and patterns that often go unnoticed. I find these patterns and details in the beauty of God’s creations, such as in the veins of a ti leaf, in the simplicity of a single bamboo stalk, in a winter storm as it rages over the ocean and waterfalls cascading over the Ko‘olau mountains.

The Photographer

Laura Fowler grew up in Shreveport, La. She studied art history at Davidson College in North Carolina, and became interested in photography at the age of 20, while spending two semesters of college studying and traveling in Europe. Workshops, classes and practice have all contributed to her knowledge of photography, but she credits three years of assisting commercial photographers as the greatest source of her education. She moved to Hawai‘i in 2002. See more of her work at www.laurafowlerphotography.com

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