Artist of the Week: Amy Martin's Lens Captures North Fork Landscape

There is something about the light on the North Fork that motivates photographer Amy Martin on her early morning photo shoots.

“The light on the North Fork is phenomenal. I think it is particularly special at dawn and at dusk,” Martin said.

Martin is a landscape and nature photographer with the majority of her body of work focused on the North Fork and Shelter Island. Although Martin has never had any formal training in photography, she always remembers having a camera in her hand as she was growing up.

In fact, she is a master gardener and horticulturist by trade and professional photography came later in life. She participated regularly in a craft show on her native Shelter Island for many years until she began doing more shows in 2006.

No stranger to the Greenport business community, Martin owned Greenport Florist and Greenport Flower and Garden during the 1980s. She also works at Fairweather Design Associates, and is office manager at Fairweather & Brown Management Corp. with her best friend and life partner Ian Fairweather. She originally opened in November 2007. Her gallery hosts the work of some 34 local artists and she does framing in-house as well.

A self-described purist, she never worked in a darkroom, took black and white photo, or worked with digital camera until her husband gave her a gift of a Nikon D80 about three years ago. Although she owns the Photoshop program, she has never used it. The one alteration she will make on her pictures is cropping an image to the perfect size.

She attributes her success behind the lens to practice and having a feel for the right shot. She may go out on a shoot with a purpose, but then her process becomes more organic and she will come home with anywhere between 20 to 60 shots. The only images she will camp out for are the ospreys near the bridge by the Greenport/Southold line.

Her favorite time of day to shoot is the morning or when at low tide, which, she says, is great for waterscapes. She likes the calmness of that time of day, the light, and the reflections she can capture.

“I get up before dawn. I have a lot more sunrises than sunsets,” she said.

For the first time her gallery is featuring her own work. Martin said it is a hard business running a gallery full-time in the poor economy, but she said many of her artists help out at the gallery when they can.  She sometimes thinks about retiring from the gallery business, although she is quick to add that she will always be a photographer.

Now she is working on more abstract and reflective work. The more she can get out and take pictures, the more fortifying and satisfying it is for her.

“It’s never the same. No matter what you do, you see things you’ve never seen before,” Martin said.