Since she was a child, Jenni Koontz has taken an interest in photography.
“I always used film cameras until my freshman year of college,” said Koontz, 32, who lives on Hatteras Island in Avon, North Carolina with her daughter Emma Sage.
Instagram: @epicshutterphotography
Koontz graduated with a psychology degree and went back to school for digital photography. After photographing her daughter and getting feedback on the images, she realized photography was her passion.
“Lighting is everything and if you can read any lighting situation, you can use the light to create any image you can think of,” she said.
Now, Koontz loves to photograph the local surf culture on the Island, as well as surfers defying gravity and the waves without surfers.
“The ocean is also forever changing," she said. "It is really neat to document the evolution of the sandbars and the different swell's that come to the island."
Note: This is the sixth installment in an occasional series profiling North Carolina photographers.
Copyright 2016 North Carolina Public Radio
