Running a small, fine restaurant is where you'll find Laurie O'Donnell, this year's winner of the Magnolia Summerfest poster contest.
The Magnolia resident (she also went to Magnolia Elementary School) helps operate Wallingford's The Art of the Table with chef Dustin Ronspies. And it is on the walls of that restaurant that half a dozen of her landscape photographs hang. They range from colorful doors in rural Europe to Merida dancers in Mexico. She's got plenty from Seattle too, including Kerry Park in Queen Anne. They are strikingly good, and it's not coincidental that organizers at Summerfest selected her work to represent the festival.
But O'Donnell is unaffected by her talent. Talking about it at a table in the restaurant, one notices nonchalance in her manner, as if the picture-taking is effortless. Perhaps she was born with an eye for it. She's not sure. But she often brings a camera with her on her travels and when she sees something that raises her eyebrows, she starts shooting.
That's the way it has been in the last dozen years or so, when she pointed her Canon 20D at a mother and daughter in a hovel in Nepal, a political uprising in Mexico, luminous doorways in Italy, the unusual growth patterns of Hawaiian trees or the reflection of a harbor youth hostel in Norway.
"It's something I love doing," she said. "I just see something at the time and I take it. I don't go with the intent to take a specific photo."
The contrast of blue, orange, red and green in her winning photo was actually taken at a Mexican cemetery. Not only do the colors contrast well, but in other pictures she captures the culture contrast found in Mexico's celebration of life during Dia de los Muertos, or day of the dead. Far from solemn, the event is full of food and dancing. One of her pictures shows two Merida dancers during the festival. It is a swirl of colors and expressions and fun.
In Nepal, O'Donnell was walking along and someone in a wedding flagged her down saying they needed someone to take pictures. O'Donnell was happy to oblige free of charge. In Turkey, she took pictures of some locals and as promised sent them the photos from home. She received a letter from one of the subjects later, which was written in Turkish (which she had interpreted by a Turkish rug dealer in Queen Anne) that implored her to visit their country again, soon.
At home in Seattle, when she's not taking landscape shots, she's shooting food for the restaurant newsletter, something she's getting a real knack for. She's planning on doing more food pictures when she travels, as a way to stockpile shots for future Ronspies recipes.
To see more of Laurie O'Donnell's photography, visit www.oasisinseattle.com
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