“My husband has been with me before when I’m taking pictures,” Richard explained. “When I get home and I show him on the computer screen, he’ll say ‘I didn’t see that.’ ‘I know,’ I say, ‘but you see it now and you never would have seen it if someone didn’t make that moment stand still for you so that you can really examine it.’”

From an early age growing up in Valdosta, Ga., it was apparent that Richard appreciated her surroundings and the beauty that encompassed her more than most children her age. She would often grab a sandwich, climb a tree and not return home again until she was hungry. Every moment of her day was spent enjoying the world around her – the birds, the trees, the rivers and lakes, and the sunsets.

“I have always felt closer to nature around me than most people,” she added. “I feel like the natural area around you is so nurturing. It revives your spirit. It gives you fuel. It makes your soul sing.”

After a healthy childhood, Richard moved to Nashville, Tenn. where she adopted her son. This is when she discovered her passion and talent for photography.

“If children don’t get you interested in it, then there is nothing that will,” she said smiling.

After living more than 30 years in Nashville and having a grown son, Richard was ready to return to the life that inspired her so much as a child. In 1999, she and her husband moved to Destin – a place that she calls home.

“Destin is very laid back. It is just so much like where I grew up – a very comfortable feeling.”

Richard almost had everything that she wanted in her new home – beautiful surroundings, unique people and a place to relax. Then the problem came. She could not find a lab that allowed her to print her own pictures from film. As a result, she was forced to shoot them and take them to a processing lab.

“When we lived in Nashville, there were a lot of facilities where I could take pictures in and develop them myself. I could crop them and change them a little bit. I really got used to that and loved doing it,” she recalled. “Then, when we moved down here, we didn’t have anything like that.”

Richard started bringing film into a lab. She asked them to crop the images a certain way, but they never came back the way she imagined in her mind. She felt she had lost control of her images.

“It would always frustrate me to take film in and say ‘now I want it cropped like this.’ They never came back right.”

Just when she was starting to get discouraged with her love of photography, her husband brought home a surprise that completely changed her life.

“My husband gave me a digital camera, and I have always been kind of a computer nerd,” she explained. “So with a digital camera and software, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.”

Richard, amazed with all that she could create with a digital camera, finally felt like she had regained control over her images.

“Unless you are doing it yourself, you don’t have any control over it,” she said. With digital cameras, “you can enhance it; you can change the attitude, and you don’t have to depend on somebody to get it the way you want.”

With this new toy in hand, Richard developed a presence in the Destin community with her photographs. She became a working photographer talented in freezing moments of time between people and nature.

She quickly found her favorite subject matter – children.

“I love photographing children,” she said. “This really surprises me, because they’re not easy to photograph. They’re just this constant motion.”

Although she loves to photograph all people, it is not hard to guess why Richard prefers children to adults. Children do not zone in on their imperfections.

“Children haven’t built up all that resistance to ‘oh well, don’t get this side or that side. I don’t like the way this or that looks about myself,’” she explained. “Adults the first thing they look for in their picture is whatever they perceive to be their worst feature. They just have so many preconceived notions about their appearance.”

When Richard is not photographing people, she aims her camera at the peaceful and tranquil aspects of Destin that give it small town charm – sunsets and birds.

Each person is born with something inside waiting to be discovered. Although it took her many years to find, photography is Richard’s passion.

“You have to find what your music is, what really makes your soul sing, and what gives you joy,” she said. “When you find that, you try to share that in an artistic way. For some people it’s painting, for some people it’s photography, and for some people it’s music.”

Richard’s work can be seen across the Emerald Coast from Pensacola to Panama City. Her work is available at Quayside Gallery in Pensacola, Geana’s Gallery and Beau Esprit in Destin, and online at http://www.coastalreflections.com/.