Hi there. My name is Heather Gallagher and I am an Austin based photographer for hire, available for travel world wide.

I specialize in lifestyle, maternity, family, childrens and travel photography and have a fine art and documentary background. I graduated with a BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY in 2007 and remained in New York City for another 5 years. During that time, I had the immense honor to work with some of the worlds leading commercial, editorial and documentary Photographers as a Photographer’s assistant. This experience brought me all over the US and India, into some of the worlds most famous venues and into the homes of celebrities and everyday people. In my own work, I have photographed children and loved ones of all ages for various publications and for mantels and family albums all over the world. It is a privilege to be asked to photograph a family. To have my vision and talent trusted to preserve such an awesome thing as the birth of your child, their first steps, their high school senior portrait and their wedding and all the other amazing moments in between is humbling.

My relationship with photography is an intimate one. My mother is a deaf, Chinese immigrant, to whom American Sign Language is a third language and English is a fourth. My father is a hearing, American to whom ASL is a second language, acquired as an adult. I grew up signing a hybrid of languages and was an interpreter to everyone.  From an early age, I would leave drawings instead of notes, telling my mother where I was and what I was doing after school. Not being much of an illustrator, I featured ill drawn stick figures coming and going from places with skewed perspective; lots of underlining and arrows were utilized in these drawings!  When I was about 13 years old  I discovered photography and got my first polaroid camera. With the instant and exact communicative powers of the polaroid, I was immediately obsessed with telling my story thru photographs and my mom finally knew exactly what I had been trying to tell her all those years and whether or not I left the house with a jacket on! My photography is my way of communicating with the world, regardless of linguistics. My work is an ongoing dialogue. With myself and the people, places and things around me.

I travel whenever and however possible but when I’m not there, I’m here, in Austin, TX with my lovely husband and hilarious dog and cat.

You can view my website at: http://www.heathergallagherphotography.com