Portrait Of A Photographer — Donna Hopkins

*Donna at Historic Polegreen Church, Mechanicsville, Virginia, August 2025*

Every so often I want an updated photo of myself for this website. I’ve known people, and by people, I mean women, who have flatly told me that they do not include a photo of themselves or tell their age on their website because they do not think their age is relevant to their work. To their way of thinking, age should not have bearing on how their work is viewed or perhaps judged. Fair enough. But I see my age as a part of my evolution and integral to my creative work. An accurate photo is kind of like truth in advertising for me.

Of course, there is only so much truth I can take. I was happy to discover lots of portrait presets in photoshop to soften skin and texture hair and just generally smooth out those fine lines and wrinkles. This is how I think I look, and that seems like a good place to start.

Many thanks to my fine husband for taking 5 decent photographs of me and making me smile. I really want one of those cool portraits where I am not smiling, but instead looking pensive, but truthfully, I just look mad in all of those photographs, and not at all like myself.

If I could get married all over again, I’d do it here, at Historic Polegreen Church.