Since Petaluma High, "Hey Wools," has been the choice name to get my attention - I embrace the many memories associated with it, past and present.
I didn't start out as a professional photographer - however it was my-go-to as child when words where not enough.
In my late teens I started out on a 40,000-acre cow-calf ranch, working as a ranch hand in my late teens, learning early what it means to pay close attention — to land, to weather, to animals, to community, to the rhythms of a place you don't control but have to understand.
That question — why stories matter — is what pulled me toward photography in the first place. Working at Vision Gallery and John Pence Gallery in San Francisco put me in daily contact with image-makers and the craft of seeing. It was during this time that I picked up a camera with real intention, documenting the lives of youth living with HIV/AIDS — my first real photo documentary project, and the one that showed me what a camera could do when pointed at the people the world tends to look away from.
That thread carried me into work at Walden House's PlainTree program, supporting people navigating HIV/AIDS, mental health, and substance use — and later into a decade at the ACLU, first in development, then on the capital campaign team that raised $26 million. All the while, I kept photographing: documentary work on the fight for marriage equality during the Prop 8 era among other projects, chasing stories that felt urgent and human.
Eventually I moved back to Petaluma California with my family and spent time at Marin Agricultural Land Trust — work that reconnected me to where it all started: land, community, and the people who steward both.
Today, I'm a freelance photographer telling stories of the community I live in. Hey Wools is documentary lifestyle photography studio — every session, every project, approached the same way I approached that ranch, that gallery wall, that campaign, that community: with attention, with freshness, and authenticity and a "can do attitude"...
Photo Credit: Debbie Wilson Photography