Claudia Seeger captures unique view of the world through photography

It’s dawn on Sullivan’s Island. The sun is just beginning to rise, and photographer Claudia Seeger is already on the beach with her two dogs, Nikon camera in hand.

She is crouched low to the ground, one eye pressed against the camera’s view-finder, as she tries to coax a shy hermit crab out of his shell. Minutes later, Seeger is lying flat on the sand, snapping dozens of photos of a Styrofoam cup nestled in the sea foam. A stray white birthday party balloon flirting with the incoming tide also catches her attention.

While Seeger appears to be taking pictures of random objects that most passerby might ignore, she’s actually using her camera lens to show us a unique, totally different perspective on minute aspects of the world around us.

“I definitely have a love for composition,” Seeger observes. “I really appreciate the natural juxtaposition of colors and textures all around me…I think that, with photography, more so than with any other medium, like drawing or painting, I am immediately able to express my view of the world.”

A resident of Mt. Pleasant, Seeger reflects that she loved drawing and painting as a child, growing up in Waynesboro, Georgia, and felt fortunate to be surrounded by adults, including her mother, who encouraged her to hone her artistic skills. Seeger was content with her paint brushes until she fell in love with the camera during an introductory course in photography at the College of Charleston, where she double-majored in communication studies and studio art. 

“I was especially inspired by one assignment where we were challenged to transform an ordinary object into an extraordinary image,” recalls Seeger. “The challenge then - and still today - is to turn objects that may be typically overlooked into a work of art. While a Styrofoam cup is a beautiful image, photographically speaking, it also does prompt the question - what is a Styrofoam cup doing on the beach? This question will hopefully lend itself to a deeper conversation about environmental concerns and issues.”

After graduation, Seeger took a job downtown as an assistant at the Dubose Blakeley photography studio followed by a position at Charleston’s Gibbes Museum. But Seeger was eager to return to working with her own camera - and dive deeper into learning new photographic techniques. She travelled to Santa Fe to attend a month-long workshop by photographer Mark Citret, a disciple of the renowned Ansel Adams, revered by many as a master of stunning black and white photographs of the American West and a pioneer of photography as an art form.

Even as Seeger immersed herself in learning more about photography, she also wanted to fulfill her long-held desire to run a full art program for young students. Seeger subsequently pursued a combined Masters of Education in Administration and Art Education at University of South Carolina and dedicated the next several years to teaching visual art to elementary and middle school students in Columbia, S.C.

Seeger returned to the Charleston area approximately four years ago to continue her teaching career at Dorchester District II schools. Here, she met - and ultimately married - Daniel Island resident and financial advisor Paul Comer.

“He persuaded me that, with my aptitude for visual composition, creative abilities, and my love of helping people, that I should think about getting my real estate license.” Currently, Seeger is an agent with Keller Williams Realty in Mount Pleasant.

After the sudden death of her husband in November 2016, Seeger realized that her perception of the world around her began to change, especially as she saw it through her camera’s lens.

“I felt like I was walking through a dream all the time. Colors around me appeared more vivid than I’d ever seen them. Maybe it was a result of the grief I was experiencing,” she reflects. “I began to pay really close attention to the tiniest details in objects, the shapes of petals on flowers. It felt like time slowing down. It was a new, but very healing experience of the world around me.” 

Seeger began to explore digital color photography in place of the black and white images, often shot on film, that had become so much a part of her signature. Her work was featured last year during the months of November and December at Daniel Island’s Honeycomb Café.

While she prefers photographing random objects to portraits of people and animals, Seeger regularly returns to Waynesboro, nicknamed the “bird dog” capital of the world, to photograph the annual Field Trials held in her hometown every winter. Her photographs, popular with the residents and dog-owners alike, adorn the walls of many of the homes in Waynesboro.

Field trials aside, the photographer insists that she has all the material she needs for her purposes here in the Charleston area, right at the water’s edge in the Lowcountry.

“I like to focus on the interplay of line and texture that I find in random objects set in backgrounds that seem work together naturally,” she observes. “They lend an abstract quality to many of my photographs.”

Seeger reflects: “I enjoy simple things in life. I guess that’s why I love photographs. They’re uncomplicated, calming and timeless.”

Just like the work of the photographer herself.

For more information on Seeger’s work, call (843) 860-6060 or visit her website: www.claudiaseegerphotography.com.  

Daniel Island Publishing

225 Seven Farms Drive
Unit 108
Daniel Island, SC 29492 

Office Number: 843-856-1999
Fax Number: 843-856-8555

 

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