Seeing Differently: An Interview With Heather Inich

“I’ve pretty much had a camera in my hand for as long as I can remember,” said Heather Inich, one of the artists for the Veterans’ Art Exhibit. 

Inich is an Air Force veteran, and she said she started volunteering for the Special Olympics during the military—something she continued to do after leaving the military. Eventually, she became a photographer for the Special Olympics in Kentucky, and her journey with photography continued from there.

For her, photography is a way to relax and decompress. Her work focuses mostly on nature, and she said her camera lens lets her see things different—and encourage others to do the same.

“I always look at things that the normal person wouldn’t think are pretty,” she said. “When I go out and do pictures, I get lost and I lose track of time.”

No matter what’s going on, photographing nature can be a respite. “You can’t mess up nature,” she said. “You can’t make nature mad.”

She said that the ability to really look at nature is an important one, especially during the pandemic, when many people are both spending more time outside and are also being forced to look at things differently. 

For Inich, it’s about noticing. She recounted one story in particular of one of her photos: I was walking a creek bed because I was taking a photography class, and I happened to glance down at the ground and there was a wooden cross necklace…so I just quickly snapped a picture and moved on,” she said. 

Later, artist friends asked her if she’d kept the necklace, and she said no. “It didn’t feel right,” she said. “I didn’t feel like it was for me.”

For her, one of the important parts of nature photography is that ability to look at something closely and deeply but not necessarily need to touch it.

“The way that nature washed it up onshore was the way I left it,” she said. Later, a colleague commented that the photo “reminds me that God is where you need him to be.”

Inich said she hopes that kind of careful noticing and seeing different is what people take away from seeing her work.