CCLaP Photo Feature: Lindsey Fast

Lindsey Fast Chicago Center for Literature and Photography Photographer Feature March 6, 2014 Editor: Rebecca Vipond Brink

Location: Chicago, IL I was born in 1980 and raised in Chicago's northwest suburbs. I received my first camera when I was 7 years old which started my fascination with photography. In high school, I took a photography class and after developing my first picture I knew that it would be a lifelong pastime of mine. I attended college at Southern Illinois University from 1998 to 2002 where I graduated with a degree in photography. After graduation, I briefly moved to Los Angeles and worked at a photo lab in Santa Monica. I then came back to Chicago and worked as an assistant photographer for a couple of years.

Deciding I would rather keep photography as my own, I left the photography industry and worked in advertising for 8 years. During that time I met my husband and we got married in the Summer of 2012. Two weeks after that we packed up and moved to Portland Oregon. We spent a year there hiking and exploring and I worked at a photography studio. Now we're back in Chicago to be close to our family, ready to start the next chapter of our lives!

I'm looking forward to a lifetime of adventures and all the photographs that come with it!

What is it about nature that calls to you?

I love nature! I love being outdoors and surrounding myself with the beauty of nature. My appreciation for nature has been ingrained in me since I was a kid. My family would take a vacation every summer to Door County, Wisconsin and there we would spend hours exploring the forests in Peninsula State Park. When I was a teenager, I joined the Wilderness Club at my high school and took weekend camping trips to places like Governor’s Dodge in Wisconsin and Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky with my fellow classmates. I attended college at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale nestled in the Shawnee National Forest where I spent many a weekend hiking at Giant City and Little Grand Canyon. Just recently my husband and I moved to Portland, Oregon for a year to enjoy all the beautiful nature there. We spent a year exploring and hiking and it was wonderful. Throughout my life and love of nature I’ve always had a camera to capture its beauty. To me, hiking and photography go hand in hand. When I’m out hiking, it’s the light that calls to me and how it plays with nature. Lots of photographers spend hours in a studio trying to get that perfect lighting whereas I like to work natural light. It’s really beautiful if you know how to use it.

In color photos, your subjects depend on these lush, full, bright colors—do you try to depict color in nature as it is, or as it is ideally?

I think for the most part I try to intensify the colors in my pictures whether it be by cross-processing when I use film or filters when I shoot digitally. In some cases though, the scenery is already so beautiful and the color is so intense, it doesn’t need any adjustments. It’s just perfect as is.

You seem to enjoy the sky as much as the ground; is that the case?

I do! I think sometimes when people go outside they forget to look up at the sky and down at the ground.

They are concentrating on looking straight ahead.

When I go outside, I’m looking everywhere trying to find the prettiest and most interesting story to tell.

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