In October 2021, we put the spotlight on Phoebe Wu. Phoebe is a self taught wildlife and nature photographer and an accomplished pianist. She has taken more than 180,000 photographs since 2011.

We asked Phoebe to tell us about her art. An excerpt from her October interview appears below:

The advice she gives to artists, "it's never too late to learn something new".

Some of my photographer friends label me as a 'wildlife photographer' because I take a lot of pictures of birds, ducks, geese, and some animals. However, I’m interested in all categories of photography, such as landscape, sunrise, sunset, moonrise, architecture, portraiture, and macro (macro is extreme close-up photography). I have no interest in street photography because I don’t want to get in trouble for copyright of portraits. (Street photography is photography that features unmediated chance encounters and random incidents within public places.)

Anything could be a subject of a photo. When taking picture indoors, I play with a cup, a vase, the candle light, flowers for still life photos. Weather permitting, I walk at the park, visit the Audubon wildlife reservoir, or seashore for pictures of scenery or birds.

Besides taking pictures to satisfy myself, I like to take photos at church events, especially VBS every summer. To fulfill my desire for a challenge, I don’t just try to record activities for church, I also try to catch peoples’ actions and vivid facial expressions.

I also express art through music - my major was piano performance. I appreciate different styles of music from different time periods, from Baroque, Classic, Romantic, to Contemporary music. Whether I’m practicing piano by myself or teaching my students, I listen carefully to understand the composition so that the heart and soul can come through in the music. All kinds of arts are connected, literature, music and visual. As I see a beautiful place in front of me, I see the overall big picture, as well as details. When I explain the picture of music to piano students, landscape, moonrise, and sunset photos are illustrations I use to help them understand.