Who Are These
Chicks?

Heidi Brandt & Dee Oberle
Gypsy Chicks Photography

We met when we were both working at The Creative Department , a consortium of free-lancers providing marketing communications to businesses and non-profit organizations in the Quad City area. Heidi was a graphic designer and I was the writer.  It didn't take long before we discovered we had a common interest in photography and began to show each other our work.  Later we would escape from our computers and go on mini-photo adventures. In 2004 our passion for photography began to take more of our time and a nature photo workshop at The Clearing in Door County , WI helped us move to the next level.  In 2005, we decided to join forces and establish Gypsy Chicks Photography specializing in nature, travel, environmental portraiture and stock photography.

Our photo adventures are now frequent and reviewing and critiquing each other's work has helped to provide the encouragement and support we need to develop our individual styles.  It never ceases to amaze us how we can both set up our cameras in the same place, at the same time of day and return with totally different images. We each have our own unique vision of the world; yet we continue to learn and help each other. It takes a true friend and fellow photographer to stand in the rain and hold an umbrella over you and your camera while you capture an image of a wet leaf.

Heidi, sometimes called the Queen of Macro , has a designer's eye and will zero in on the detail of a leaf or the curve of a flower creating painter-like abstract images. Her digital camera with the 12X optical zoom allows her to capture candid close-ups of wildlife. She can be found laying on her belly in the woods, climbing trees or hanging over a dock to capture the perfect close-up shot.

I (Dee) still have a writer's need to document and often step back a little before moving in for the close-up, so you will find more landscapes and people in my work.  I love the challenge of a moving target like a leaf caught in the current, a milkweed seed blowing in the wind or storm clouds changing light to shadow.  I also have an unexplainable attraction to rusty metal and weathered wood.

Although we both love to travel and photograph distant places, the majority of our nature images are within a few miles of our home or even in our own back yards. Our film of choice is Fuji Velvia™ 35-mm slide film, but we continue to experiment with black and white film, digital images, Polaroid™ transfers and image manipulations.