Pat Stalter’s two Cavalier King Charles spaniels are bored with her.
By now, the dogs are so used to the Orcutt photographer using them as models for her images, they barely raise an eye when she wants to film them.
“If I aim the camera at them, I swear I hear them say, ‘Oh not that again,’” Stalter said. “Dogs are beautiful models to work with.”
A successful fine art photographer whose work hangs on display at places like Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara and Valley Art Gallery in Orcutt among many others, Stalter has been fastidiously devoted to photography since 2001. It was then that the retired bookkeeper took a road trip with a group of girlfriends, who dubbed her the official documentarian of their vacation.
“I somehow got designated to be the trip photographer,” she said. “I realized this was a lot of fun and I might want to do more of it. It seemed like it just stuck. I’ve been doing it ever since, teaching myself everything along the way.”
Stalter is funny and succinct, a bright and energetic talker with a flair for joviality. A resident of Orcutt for the past 30 years, Stalter is a transplant from Alaska, where her parents moved when she was still a baby. After marrying her husband, the couple moved down to California, where she found work in the wine industry doing accounting.
Her knack for computer skills gave her an edge when she began to pursue photography. Stalter said that with the advancements in computers and digital technology, it’s almost a necessity for photographers to have strong computer skills for editing and other purposes.
“I was old-school and it was not easy at first, but I seemed to have an affinity for it,” she said. “I never shot with film; I’ve always shot with digital. I just loved the instant gratification. Somehow I just picked up a digital camera and saw how it worked and it just clicked.”
Stalter shoots on a Canon SLR, and like most photographers, she’s a gearhead obsessed with lenses, tripods, and more. But she’s far from the average hobbyist. Stalter’s work is popular with fans who covet her images for their striking compositions and colorful depictions of landscapes, animals, buildings, and much more.
“There are very few things I don’t like to photograph,” she said. “My favorite thing to do is trying to reach out and take a picture of something that tells a story. You don’t start out knowing this instinctively. You have to teach that to yourself.”
A few years ago Pacific Gas and Electric featured one of her images in its annual calendar; earlier this year, Corel used one of her images in its software’s photo gallery.
She said little recognitions such as those make her feel proud, but she points to more personal interactions that drive her. Her image of the La Purisima Mission fountain in Lompoc is one of more than a dozen that hang in Santa Barbara’s Cottage Hospital. Stalter said that one day she received a letter from a man whose wife was dying of breast cancer. While at the hospital, his family noticed something about the image on the wall near her room.
“They told him it was the same fountain where he and his wife had gotten married,” Stalter said. “I cried. I sent him a copy of the photograph. These are the moments, without realizing, that you’re working for.”
Arts and Lifestyle Writer Rebecca Rose takes many pictures of her dog. Contact her at rrose@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jul 26 – Aug 2, 2018.
