Blending light, nature, emotion & good energy to tell your story is my art.
Photographer. Storyteller. Cowgirl. Artist. Lyricist. Mind Architect. Mother.
And apparently, occasional accidental investigative journalist. 😂
I’m Karrie Ann, an 8th-generation Californian and lifelong Northern California mountain girl who has called Mount Shasta home since I was 10 years old.
For most of my life, I thought my art was photography.
These days, I realize it’s bigger than that.
My art is how I see the world... how I experience it, question it, photograph it, laugh at it and turn it into a story.
Sometimes that story becomes a photograph. Sometimes it’s a video, a song, a few words that make someone think, or an adventure that probably seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea at the time. 😂
I have a deep love for family, psychology, spirituality, nature, photography, storytelling, music, laughter and a wee bit of an animal obsession. I’m endlessly curious about people and the human mind, and I’m fascinated by the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, where we came from and what all of this means.
Mostly, I’m living my life here in the mountains... looking for adventure, connection, beauty, meaning and a bit of joy down every trail.
My roots in California run deep.
I’m an 8th-generation Californian, descended from ancestors who settled here in the mid-1800s and, by the late 1800s, were growing alfalfa quite literally on what would eventually become Hollywood Boulevard... long before the buildings, movie studios and traffic jams arrived.
My own story started in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where I basically came into this world and climbed onto the back of a horse.
My parents created Serenity Boys Ranch in 1973, a home for troubled teenage boys that became their labor of love and the backdrop of my earliest childhood.
From birth until I was about 10 years old, I spent much of my life surrounded by horses, mountains, rivers, campfires and a rotating cast of boys who became part of our unconventional family.
I grew up floating down the Feather River, horse packing through the mountains, writing and singing songs with my mother, Kathleen, telling stories around campfires and learning survival skills alongside my father, brothers and all the boys.
We spent weeks and sometimes months at the old Scales Mining Camp in Poverty Hill, which we basically took over every summer and winter.
There was no electricity... so naturally my animals and ofcourse a 55-gallon drum full of hot wax became one of the highlights of my childhood entertainment at scales. In fact i still drag along a big pot of wax to melt at family campouts lol. Wax gloves and figurines are the best!
Creativity finds a way. 😂
When I was 10, my family relocated to the small Northern California town of Mount Shasta... the place I would come to know as home.
I somehow became the sole inheritor of the herd of horses carried over from Serenity Boys Ranch, with very little supervision in sight.
I spent A LOT of my adolescence wandering the Shasta-Trinity mountains on horseback... alone with my thoughts and a world of trails that could take me anywhere but home.
And I documented it all with a simple little point-and-shoot pocket camera.
It wasn’t long before I started making friends with tourists and offering horseback rides around Lake Siskiyou.
I became the unofficial “it girl” for any adventure-seeking equine enthusiast who wanted to meet God while sliding down Rainbow Ridge... the sketchy and VERY steep shortcut to the lake from where I lived behind Brown Ranch.
To be honest, my business model was pretty simple:
Treat your horse good and keep up.
Your purchase also included soiled pants and a Polaroid picture of you and your horse. 😂
That little Polaroid camera and my point-and-shoot became some of the earliest instruments in what would eventually become a lifelong obsession with documenting the world around me.
Somewhere in there... the photographic artist was born.
My 20s took me in just about every direction imaginable.
I sang in a band, wrote songs and poetry, traveled throughout the western states working on ranches in California, Washington and Colorado, worked on and off for my father, started colts and spent 5½ months riding horseback from Mexico to Canada with a few detours along the way.
I worked as a wildland firefighter, started a family, became a law enforcement dispatcher and survived more than a few intense chapters that forced me to learn a lot about resilience, the human mind and myself.
Eventually, in 2005, after a whole lot of soul searching, I realized that photography was the thing that made me feel most alive.
So I bought my first “real” camera... a digital Canon Rebel with a kit lens.
And then I became obsessed.
I taught myself everything I could through the internet, workshops, trial and error and thousands upon thousands of photographs.
A couple of years later, I won a technology grant specifically for women in tech that allowed me to purchase a Canon 5D and a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens.
That camera changed everything.
It was around this time that Living Shasta Photography by KA was born, and my artistic style really began to take shape... especially my love for photographing people within the massive landscapes surrounding Mount Shasta.
Interestingly enough, all these years later, I still predominantly use the modern versions of that same camera and lens combination.
I guess when you know, you know.
The next decade was a giant creative experiment.
I opened a photography studio. I created calendars and cards. I photographed commercial campaigns, sports, schools, products, brands, weddings, studio portraits, outdoor portraits, rodeos and lifestyle sessions.
I photographed the night sky.
I taught workshops.
I taught cell phone photography to middle school students.
I worked with commercial production companies.
I appeared in a documentary.
I tried just about everything that sparked my curiosity.
All while raising my family and enjoying being a mom most of all.
It felt a little like an ADHD journey around the sun and back... but every detour taught me something.
Eventually, a series of unfortunate events forced me to reevaluate what I actually wanted my life and my art to feel like.
So I ripped open the curtains to Oz and started walking away from the things that drained me.
I chose environmental portrait art.
I chose Mother Nature as my studio.
I chose the human soul as my muse.
And I chose to rehabilitate my frazzled nervous system while I was at it.
Creating art in nature where I could wander around the woods for hours, chase beautiful light, explore wild places and visit with people from around the world felt a whole lot more like me.
At 50, I find myself entering another chapter.
Photography is still one of the great loves of my life, but I’m realizing the thread connecting everything I’ve ever created has always been storytelling... the photographs, songs, adventures, people I meet, the history of the place I call home, and even the unique situations I occasionally find myself standing in the middle of.
I’m fascinated by the mind, the soul and this strange experience of being human. I want to tell stories that make people think, make people laugh and maybe see something they’ve looked at a thousand times in an entirely different way.
Sometimes that might be through a photograph. Sometimes a story, a song or something I haven’t even thought of yet.
I don’t feel the need to define my art quite as narrowly anymore.
I’m still a photographer. Still a storyteller. Still a cowgirl wandering around the mountains with horses, dogs and a camera... looking for adventure, meaning, connection and a bit of joy down every trail.
Because somewhere along the way, I realized...
My art was never just about what I photographed. It was always about how I see the world.
Welcome to my little corner of it.
Karrie Ann | Living Shasta
Field notes from a Siskiyou County native and Living Shasta photographic artist, Karrie Ann 📸🏔️
Click here to find my photography, stories, adventures and social channels