Shelley Wood

Shelley Wood has work in private, museum and public collections including AIPP and in the Splash Exhibit at Barton Springs. She has received two Cultural Contracts from the City of Austin as well as a Partners in the Arts and Humanities award. She continues to create and exhibit work while sharing her love for photography through teaching. Wood teaches many avenues of photography at a variety of schools in Austin and privately. Her work has been published nationally and internationally. She has served as the Director of the DarkRoom Co-op since 1994 and has been teaching swimming since high school.

She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas concentrating in photography. After working as a photographers’ assistant in California and New York eventually transitioning into working as a freelance photographer never losing sight of her personal work along the way. In 2010 she began teaching photography.

Growing up on the coast of Texas much of her time was spent in and around the water. Wood had two and four-legged siblings, some small and some large. Water and animals have always been in her life which is probably why both have been prominent in her personal work. As a kid Wood was in to art and liked taking pictures of happenings and friends never putting much thought into it. When she started college she knew she wanted to do something creative but wasn’t sure what. After a year of random classes Wood decided to take an aptitude test. The results came back with photography as number one on the list of career choices. Then she began thinking about creating images.

According to Wood, “Without a connection, the camera is only a tool. A capture to document. A still reality, until the photographer communicates further, expressing emotion, mood or perception. With LamWood Ranch I want the images to go beyond the time consuming responsibility of care taking, toward the enchanting existence of animals and humans living as they do.”