While growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I’ve always had an interest in capturing memories on print--usually with a borrowed camera--until I purchased my initial camera in the early ‘90s.  The very first photo I enlarged and framed for my wall was a moment my Kodak preserved of Mirror Lake north of the Madison area during autumn.  Several years later I moved on to the Pentax Zoom, followed by the purchase of an automatic camera I really liked, the Nikon Lite Touch.

After hiking in the Superstition Mountain Wilderness while vacationing in Arizona, I chose to relocate to Scottsdale in July of 1998.  This is really when my amateur photography hobby began.  Everyone said I shot great photos; that I had an “eye” for capturing beautiful places.  Those photos filled up over ten huge photo albums when I finally taught myself Photoshop and FrontPage in May of 2001 and published www.hikingallery.com; scanning in every one of my favorite photos sorted according to the season and/or location each were taken.  Afterwards I realized my images really didn’t display the greatest quality so I invested in a decent digital camera in March of 2004, the Fuji FinePix S7000.  (I shoot all my images raw, then convert to tif for printing and jpg for the website.)

In July of 2004 I visited Zion National Park, and the following September found me in Southern Utah.  I hiked all over Zion and began working for a local resort as a hiking guide.  Many photos were taken on hikes in these spectacular areas; hence the ”Canyon Country” section of www.hikingallery.com.  Currently Hikin’ Gallery holds over 2500 photos.  Having to carefully choose prints in the fall of 2005 for the first art festival I participated in gave me an idea to create a new website, www.naturebyellen.com published in March of 2006, holding the exquisite images of Hikin’ Gallery.  I had planned to publish any new select photos only on Nature by Ellen, but I've been adding hikes & images to Hikin' Gallery ever since.  And recently I upgraded to the Fuji FinePix S9100/S9600 when my S7000 had an accident with a tree!  I am very happy with the upgrade :)

Then I met my match and was married in June of 2008!  Jim (and his geeky geology side :)) has taken me on more wild hiking adventures and we began creating "The Great Basin" section launched in 2009 with many updates to come in 2010. Our honeymoon on the Southwater Caye in Belize was fabulous so I had to share the snorkeling and fun in the new Belize section designed in November 2008, and for our 2nd honeymoon we chose to drive over 5000 miles round-trip to Milwaukee, hiking and photographing along the way for the last section published.

Of course my enthusiasm for hiking and photographing continues to expand and I am looking forward to many more new adventures now with my husband Jim.  To me it is the ultimate “high” absorbing all of our Creator’s work and doing my best to capture special moments with my camera; to be able to reflect on those moments and share them with everyone!  What especially awes me is enlarging the beauty of a small delicate flower and observe the details designed by our Number One Artist.