First, the former Wall Street professional transformed six and a half acres of farmland on Big Valley Road in Poulsbo to a delightful garden retreat named Llama Rose Farm. Then she opened up her farm home and its lovely gardens for weddings and special occasions, to share its beauty with others. This led her to photography, first to capture Llama Rose Farm on film, and then to document the wedding celebrations taking place on the property.

“I’m going to burn bright and burn out,” said Whitfield of her life, and her willingness to embrace the changes in her life and move forward.

Today Llama Rose Farm no longer hosts events and Whitfield no longer photographs weddings. The llamas that served as inspiration for the farm’s name are gone and professional landscapers, not Whitfield, maintain the gardens. Whitfield has turned her considerable energy to a new passion: intimate portraits of women.

The photographs on display in Whitfield’s home are luminous, and look more like oil paintings than photographs, thanks to a combination of digital photography and image manipulating software. The finished image has a distinct, one might even say unique, appearance. Too life-like to be a painting, but somehow too soft to be a photograph.

“It’s just really wonderful to do beautiful, loving portraits,” said Whitfield. “I value that.”
Although the term “intimate portraits” may conjure up the idea of some fairly erotic, perhaps even tawdry, images, Whitfield’s portraits are nothing like that. They are tasteful. Sensual, yes. Smutty, no.

Whitfield is quick to explain the difference.

“Intimate does not mean how many clothes you have off or on,” she said. “It’s not erotic art — it’s about capturing what’s within, looking for the moment of engagement.”

Indeed, Whitfield considers these portraits to be collaborations with her subject. You can’t fake the kind of intimacy she is trying to capture in these portraits.

“They have to be with me and present,” she said of her subjects, “Their expression is the power of these images and that has to come from the subject.”

The software tools that Whitfield uses to create these striking portraits are not easy ones to learn. She said she’s felt that she’s been at her current skill level for less than a year.

“Now I have some real level of mastery,” she said. “I love my work.”

Whitfield’s work has won awards in a number of international photography shows, and she is a frequent teacher and judge at these events, as well.

Although Whitfield feels that this portrait work is her true, long-term passion, true to form she is taking on another challenge: opening an art gallery in Poulsbo at the Poulsbo Place phase II development. The gallery, which should be open sometime this spring, will be used to display her work — which will not be for sale — as well as the work of other area artists.

“For the first time I’ll be in the midst of a community,” Whitfield said. “I’m really, really looking forward to that.”.