Valerie's interest in photography began as a young child looking through copies of Arizona Highways magazine in the doctor's office in Olympia, Washington. She later collected pretty postcards during family vacations and camping trips in the 1970's. After using a Kodak Instamatic 110 and a Polaroid camera, she bought a Pentax 35 mm camera when she was 22 and began to experience a measure of satisfaction with the quality of the photos she could take. In the 1980's and early 90's she was a reporter/photographer for small town newspapers while raising her family of four...more