With a pink Kodak 110, Nicole Hope Matthews sped through her grandmother's garden playfully snapping a roll of film each afternoon. She was four years old at the time and already curious about how her motions would be reflected in her prints. The sprightly child was unconsciously engaging in her first trials with experimental photography. While growing up outside of Philadelphia, Matthews' curiosities evolved into artistic vision. She majored in photography and minored in art history while earning a degree from Drexel University. She founded and headed Drexel's Art Club in an effort to share her passion, engage her peers, and collaborate with Philadelphia's thriving local artist community. Matthews' work has focused on long exposure self-portraits, since the discovery of her grandmother's terminal illness in 2006. She captures her images in nearly complete darkness, using only a hand held light to paint in her picture. She also has a working portfolio of Fine Art Portraits of artists; the subjects are depicted as part of a painting. She borrows and transforms lighting techniques from painting's masters to feature both artist and essence in a single tableau. Nicole Hope Matthews is a partner at New Leaf Photography photographing weddings and events and she also works as a freelance photographer in the Greater Philadelphia Region. She specializes in portraiture and is known for her exceptional appreciation of light and clarity. Matthews often travels to Greece with her husband and is aspiring to hold an exhibit of her photographs overseas.
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