About Martha

I have been a chef and pastry chef (including working 2 years in Germany) for 35 years. I realize after all this time that what I like the most is not cooking, but creating. I’ve won contests with cocoa paintings. I have decorated cakes with marzipan and sculpted with chocolate. I had the good fortune to have a work-study job with the photographer for the Culinary Institute of America when I was attending school.

Unfortunately and fortunately things were very sexist in the food industry in Germany. But women were accepted in the pastry department, which was the most creative area in kitchens. I made a large cocoa painting of a castle – the hotel I worked in – for a birthday party for the Prince of Hessen! I didn’t want to cook, I wanted to be an artist. Changing my livelihood to a creative passion seems an appropriate path to take.

Everywhere I lived or traveled I had a camera; through National Parks, sailing the coast of Maine, gardening, and in every restaurant or hotel I worked in. I hope eventually to have a section of food photographs. Though for now, it’s the great outdoors.

Shooting photographs means being out in all kinds of weather. I love the outdoors, so no problem there. I have learned the hard way to ALWAYS have my camera with me. Enjoying the outdoors – snow storms and rain included – is a bonus. It is not my hope to be the best, but to do something that I love, which includes being in the outdoors and enjoying the creative process.