Hello!
I’m Tracey Sanders, owner, photographer, & designer at Solona Creative. I started Solona to encompass all of the aspects of design and photography that I enjoy. There are some theories that artists should pick one specific type of art and be good at that one aspect. I love to design for print, web, and photograph life, because of that, I can’t pick just one.
I have loved photography all of my life, maybe since the day I was born. I grew up following my father’s every step and he nurtured my photography passion. My first photos were taken with a brownie camera, then with a homemade pinhole camera. We developed film and printed the photos right in our basement. I carried my Minolta 35mm camera through high school and college. I graduated from University of Delaware with a Bachelors of Science in Visual Communications specializing in Graphic Design. From 1991 until about 2006 I focused on my design career and produced a wide variety of print and web products. I watched print evolve from paste-up and photo stats in a darkroom to computer design and direct-to-plate technology.
I also watched as photography has taken leaps and bounds in technology. Not needing to wait hours or days to get film developed is amazing. Now it’s momentarily “developed.” With the push of a button I can review whether the shot has the right amount of light or if the pose was what I was looking for. Digital has created a photographer’s dream workflow. I moved to digital when my son was born, and that allowed me to refocus on my photography passion.
I used my mantra word, Solona, as my company name. I felt it worked perfectly if you broke the word down in pieces. Sol = sun. I prefer natural light to power my photos. Solo – because this is my own business, and I’m a one woman team. The word became my mantra one day on a drive. It was the name of a street I passed by while photographing real estate in Florida, the sunshine state, and well, I love how the word rolls off my tongue. Sol – on – a.