Kristi Roberts’ twin passions—travel and photography—began during childhood. In second grade, she asked of Santa only one thing: a “real camera, with film it.” Santa obliged, with a note that she’d have to earn the money to pay for her film and flashbulbs. Kristi began capturing images of her surroundings right away, and moved constantly with her military family, first across the United States and then overseas to Seoul, South Korea.

After completing her Master’s degree at Trinity University in San Antonio, Kristi again went abroad to teach at American Schools. During travels on four continents, her photographic style evolved. Gradually, she began pushing convention—framing architectural images in sidewalk puddles and rippling streams and shooting objects in nature at extreme magnification to create studies of light and form. With CitySnowflakes, inspired one night by the Crysler Building in New York, she ventured into digital manipulation, creating whimsical, kaleidoscopic images from photographs of iconic architecture.

“As we go about our day-to-day lives, we tend to stop ’seeing’ our surroundings. Travel forces one to ‘wake up’ – to live intentionally, to fully see and experience the world. By changing perspective on the common, by creating new windows and spaces through my photographic rendering of the familiar and even cliché, I hope to challenge viewers to re-see their surroundings. I want my work to cause people to look closer, to ponder, to smile as they see the familiar again, as if for the first time.”

Kristi’s photography has been exhibited in Warsaw, Poland; McLean, Virginia; and New York. She is currently a Foreign Service Officer posted to Washington, DC.