You can always find beauty if you just keep your eyes open

work for the first time. “They look at the portraits and sometimes they even touch it and they say ‘Is that a photograph or is that a painting’? “To me, it says that my careful planning has paid off,” she said.

Sumra may be a careful planner in the studio, but she’s an adventurer in life, a blonde dynamo and world traveler who loves fashion and fitness. She traded a career in aircraft engineering back home in Russia for love because the man of her dreams just happened to be a doctor in Cavalier, North Dakota. So fourteen years ago, Sumra found herself halfway across the world, a young bride in a new place, in search of a new passion.

She built her photography business, Inna Photography, from the ground up. A daughter – now 11 – soon followed. The business expanded to include a state-ofthe-art studio in downtown Cavalier and an expansive

Inna’s Awards and Accolades

Inna Sumra’s photographs have won seven Professional Photographers (PPA) of America International Awards. The PPA is the largest non-profit association for professional photographers in the world.

Sumra will have these two photos featured in The Royal Photographic Society’s International Images for Screen Exhibition in 2014. She is also working toward a fellowship with the Royal Photographic Society. Only society fellows are eligible to photograph the Royal Family, a career high for any portrait photographer.

outdoor studio, over 100 acres Sumra calls “Mini Hollywood.” It’s a wonderland of trees, prairie grasses and wildflowers that also includes antique cars, antique buggies, antique gas trucks, farm buildings, swings, two vintage Mercedes and even a vintage caboose and railway line.

Sumra’s clients come from miles around, making the trip to Cavalier a pleasant ritual, spending time with Sumra not just during the photo shoot, but during the planning session before the shoot and the portrait selection process afterward. This personal connection and attention to detail brings her customers back, time after time.

“With most of my clients, I become friends, almost like a family member,” said Sumra. “My family – mom and my brother – is far away in Russia and here I have only my husband and my daughter. I treat my clients like family. I pay attention to what they want and what they need. The most rewarding thing is when you go someplace and you see people and they hug you and they tell you they really appreciate what they have on their wall and how many compliments they hear from people and how much they enjoy it. That’s the most rewarding thing for me.”

Sumra is an artist who discovers and celebrates beauty, in her clients and in the world around her, from masterpieces on the walls of Europe’s most famous museums to the prairie sunsets outside her adopted North Dakota town.

“You can always find beauty,” said Sumra, “if you just keep your eyes open.” [AWM]