Veterinary student and photographer Katrina Hartman. (Photo by Linda Weiford, WSU News)
PULLMAN, Wash. – Washington State University student Katrina Hartman grew up in a Montana town so tiny that its claim to fame is a high school football team that won 11 state titles from 1992 to 2008 – with only six players.
Whenever the abbreviated team played a home game, Hartman and most of the town’s 150 residents huddled against the cold wind to cheer the players on. Called six-man football, the condensed version is designed to give students from small rural schools the opportunity to play the sport.
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| Photos by Hartman. |
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Hartman’s hometown of Highwood couldn’t be much more rural. A speck of a community among cattle grazing country in north central Montana, its closest grocery store is 30 miles away. No matter. After Hartman graduates from WSU’s veterinary college in May, she hopes to return there to live and work.
“I love the solitude,” she said.
That fondness is apparent in her photographs on exhibit at WSU’s Animal Health Library through December.
‘Nature, as is’
There are no people in her photos – only nature, untainted. Two bucks amid a wheat field, taken by Hartman while seated in a combine on the family farm. The soft-focus face of a horse, wheat stalks in the foreground. The early rays of morning gilded against a still pond.
And she took them, not with some high-end camera dressed in a long-focus lens, but with her coat-pocketable Kodak EasyShare 8.1.
“Because it’s small and light, I take it almost everywhere, especially when I go on hikes or I’m working on my family’s farm,” said Hartman. “Whether it’s a landscape or animals in their natural habitats, something about them nature, as is, I think – catches my eye and I take pictures.”
Farm vet, photographer in the making
After Hartman leaves WSU, she plans to become a large-animal veterinarian, hopefully in the Highwood area that’s home to more cows than people. If this pans out, night and day she’ll be driving her pick-up truck on gravel roads to treat farm animals weighing more than a standard refrigerator.
“I’d welcome the challenge,” said Hartman. “Not only that, but I appreciate the lifestyle there and how people work 365 days a year. It’s a way for me to give back to them.”
What’s more, Hartman can’t envision herself cooped up in a heated office somewhere: “Even when it’s 20 below, I love being outside.”
So maybe, after a long night of delivering a breech colt, she’ll step outside the barn, see the glorious early glow of nature and pull the little camera from her pocket.
The Animal Health Library is located in 170 Wegner Hall. Hours are 7:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 7:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Friday; 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday; and 1-10 p.m. Sunday.