Claire Pettingale Photography

I was born and raised in Appalachian foothills of South Carolina and resided in Virginia and Washington, DC, until my marriage brought me to the UK. I live in an industrial town in the outskirts of the Lake District National Park in the northwestern county of Cumbria. My professional background was in mathematics.  It was the beauty and elegance, the pattern and rhythm within this subject which grabbed my attention and lead me through two degrees, a bachelors in Applied Mathematics and a masters in Mathematical Theory.  I have always enjoyed patterns and rhythms whether in mathematics, music, art or nature.  In nature, I find them most surprising, mesmerising, never-ending and always attention grabbing. Over the years, I have had the great fortune to travel and my initial photography largely focused on capturing images of the various places I visited.  America, Europe, India and Africa all have their unique colours, smells, vibrancy.   Seen through a lens, the art is to capture not only the visual scene, but the full complement of sound, smell, taste and touch, as well.  I still enjoy this challenge.  In more recent years, I have traveled annually to the American West, notably Wyoming. Here, I became passionate about wildlife and landscape photography.  The grand scale of the western national parks and the flora and fauna which inhabit them draw me back.  I cannot escape their allure and only regret the limited time I have each year to spend within their compass. As I live near the coast in the UK, I have the joy of close proximity to wide sandy beaches with dramatic views of lakeland fells, broad tidal estuaries and marshland which provides habitat for numerous waterfowl and songbirds. The seasons bring some changes, but many local birds are year-round inhabitants.  Their seasons play out through the cycles of mating, breeding, rearing and migration or overwintering, repeating yet never quite the same.  I love to capture the private moments.  And  I love to try and express the personality of the creature or the drama of the landscape in a portrait style. Recently, I have expanded into a study of light and texture, producing abstracts which capture a momentary play of pattern.  I feel that in some ways, I am re-examining my mathematical beginnings, the sense of harmonics and flow, topology and reflection frozen in a minute capsule of time. I hope you will enjoy my images as much as I have enjoyed capturing them.  Please be advised that these images are under copyright and I am the sole owner. Claire Pettingale