Photographer captures the powerful beauty of horses

By Linda Bell
Correspondent

Career changers often hear and follow advice to "do what you love and the money will follow."

So it was with Livermore resident Lourie Zipf when she rediscovered her youthful fondness for horses and blended that with her previous work as a photojournalist. The recipe led to a successful free-lance career as an equine photographer.

The September 2006 issue of "Western Horseman" features Zipf's work from a photo shoot she was commissioned to do at the 65,000-acre White Horse Ranch in Oregon. Upcoming issues of "Western Horseman" will feature her photos from a Calgary rodeo and two guest ranches in southern Oregon. "Horse Illustrated" and "Horse and Rider" also have commissioned and published her photography.

Zipf said she had a horse while a teenager growing up in Oro Valley, Ariz. She said her mom was a wonderful horsewoman and even a rodeo queen, and she encouraged her daughter to ride and love horses. "She would watch me take riding lessons in Tucson before her death when I was 11," Zipf said.

But then, Zipf went away to college at Colorado State University, majored in journalism, and spent the next decade bouncing around the country pursuing a career in photojournalism. That included a two-year stint in the Midwest at Ohio University doing a graduate program in visual communications. There was not time or money for horses, she said.

Her professional path started in Rock Springs, Wyo., with feature photos of sheep shearing and salt mines, and continued on to Phoenix; Pittsburg; Boca Raton, Fla.; and Salina, Kan., before finally landing Zipf back in Colorado working as an intern, then later in a staff position, for the Daily Camera in Boulder. From Boulder, she took a position with the Loveland Reporter-Herald.

While working there, she started getting horse-related assignments. It was also during this time, Zipf said, she bought a horse and started taking pictures of him. The art and the idea came together, Zipf said, and she left the Reporter-Herald to pursue a full-time, free-lance career in equine photography.

What other kind of work would pay someone to work with famous trainers, go on organized wagon trains, stay at luxurious guest ranches and be inspired by people doing work with at-risk boys on a ranch in Wyoming, Zipf asked rhetorically.

Zipf works in digital still and video mediums. Her work can be viewed at www.louriezipf.com.