IN FOCUS

We’re all toting cameras these days, but not everyone is a photographer. True, the technology we hold in our hands can make even the most snapshotty picture look good. But there’s more to a photo than good looks. It’s not always easy to say what that is, but most of us know it when we see it. And you see it in the work of Lake Bluff resident Barbara Morley.

Morley was raised in Evanston. “I spent summers at the beach, had lots of friends, invented stories, and put on shows in my next-door neighbor’s playhouse,” she shares. “My absolute best friend was my dog, Cooky.” Keen on history, art, anthropology, and world cultures growing up, she took a degree in ecumenical religion, then moved to Colorado with a few friends and wondered what to do next. “One afternoon, while walking by myself in the beautiful great outdoors, I had a sudden inspiration to be a photographer.”

Morley headed back to the Midwest, got a job at a Buick dealership in Wilmette, and signed up for two photography courses at Columbia College. She learned how to develop and print black and white film and loved it. Working from a dark room in her Winnetka apartment, she launched into a program of self-study and two years later, with a solid portfolio in hand, went looking for work. She landed a job as an assistant in a commercial photography studio in the city. Other gigs followed, including one as a fashion stylist, an experience that played a key role in developing her visual sensibility.

After the birth of her first daughter, Morley settled in Lake Bluff and launched a successful business photographing children. Over time, she widened her scope. “After years of basically only shooting faces, I had an intuition to photograph the snowy egrets that nest in Winter Park, Florida, near my brother and sister-in-law’s home.” Nature soon became a central subject. But not in a National Geographic sort of way. Rather, it was patterns and structures that engaged her eye. And still do. “One of the many books that I’m reading is An Immense World by the Pulitzer Prize Award-winning science writer, Ed Yong. It informs us that every animal has a unique way of seeing and being in the world. With my photographs, I hope I am seeing nature in my own unique way.”

Morley began shooting with a 35mm Minolta, graduated to a Hasselblad, and then to her favorite, a Pentax Medium Format. “I was late to digital. I think it was around 2005 that I bought my first digital Canon camera. It completely opened up a new world for me.” Morley not only migrated from black and white to color but reveled in the instantaneous and the ability to manipulate images on the computer.

Operating within both the fine art and commercial worlds, Morley’s work ranges widely from images of animals that read as Irving Penn fashion spreads to kaleidoscopic renderings of water and sky to painterly interpretations of flowers and trees to fanciful romantic narratives inspired by the look and mood of 1920s Paris. “Being a fashion stylist,” notes Morley, “greatly influences how I see, how I shoot—whether portraits, performers, naturescapes, or animals. I’m always looking for the most beautiful angle, the most flattering lighting, even with birds, goats, or zebras.”

Photographers can never quite give their eyes a rest. After all, the universe never stops offering up something worth seeing. Whether it’s a face in the street or a wave hitting the shore, the subjects are endless. As the rest of us hunker down and dream of spring, Morley will be heading outside, to meet the world as it slumbers. “My next project is shooting the prairie in the winter. I have visions of peace and tranquility in mind.”

For more information, visit bmorley.com.