PDN’s 30. Our Choice of Photographers to Watch
Thayer Allyson Gowdy

Thayer Allyson Gowdy likes the good life, and it shows. Her sunny, candid images project a more polished, shinier version of real life. “I think people like my work because it makes them feel like they’re on vacation,” she explains.

Though she’d always been interested in lifestyle photography (even before she knew what it was called), it took her a while to find her niche. Disappointed with the overly rigid structure and lack of fine-art focus in her college photo program, she skipped out of school (permanently) and moved to Paris.

There, one day, she brought a camera along to a springtime wedding and discovered she found real joy in taking photographs there. “I remember the faces, the blur of kisses, the rice throwing and laughter...I was just running around and shooting a bunch of happy people.”

Weddings, it seemed, were a perfect match for her style. “I’m all about environment and what people do and spontaneity.”

Gowdy soon returned to the States where she continued to photograph weddings, and also took on jobs assisting and producing on shoots. “I became a producer so I would know how to do every aspect of my job as a photographer,” she says. “In the meantime, I was building up my book, and when I felt confident with it, that’s when I got out there and started shooting editorial.”

Her first magazine cover was for Real Simple—two long-haired girls sipping Budweisers in a rowboat, their legs dangling over the side, their feet just skimming the water. A perfect image of a late-summer afternoon.

Far from lazing around herself, these days Gowdy keeps busy out of her San Francisco storefront office juggling editorial shoots, finishing an interiors book with Chronicle, looking for a rep, and working on her new hot-pink portfolios. In her spare time she’s road-tripping and car camping, and even then, she still has her camera. “I’m not happy unless I take a pretty photo,” she says.

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