Suzann Kaltbaum
Orlando, US
Suzann Kaltbaum never planned to be a digital artist — it began with a playful family portrait. Wanting to capture her children before they left home, she created an image where the family dogs took center stage, while everyone else appeared as a painting on the wall. That first experiment in Photoshop sparked a new creative path. Bringing together her twin loves of photography and travel, Kaltbaum transforms cities, journeys, and small everyday details into layered digital works. Each piece carries a sense of discovery, inviting viewers to see the familiar with fresh eyes.
What started as a personal keepsake has grown into a practice of storytelling through images, where memory, imagination, and observation meet in vibrant, unexpected ways.
Artist Interview
Q: Your work often begins with a photograph from your travels. How do you choose which moments or places to transform into art, and what draws you to a particular scene?
A: I don’t always know in the moment which photograph will eventually become art — it usually starts with a feeling more than anything else. When I travel, I take thousands of shots, but certain ones just stay with me. Sometimes it’s something big and obvious, like the way a crowd moves through a famous crossing, or the way the sun sets over the water. Other times, it’s something small and fleeting — the quiet corner of a market, a reflection in a window, or even the way a shadow falls across the street.
What draws me in is that sense of pause. If something makes me stop, even for a second, I know there’s more to it than meets the eye. Later, when I go back through my photos, those images stand out. They carry not just the record of a place, but also the memory of how it felt to be there. That’s when I start to transform the photograph — layering in color, light, and texture until it feels less like a snapshot and more like an experience. For me, the “right” scene is never about being perfect or polished. It’s about energy, mood, and emotion. I’m not just documenting where I’ve been. I’m capturing the feeling of the moment, so that when someone else looks at it, they’re transported too — they feel the rush, the calm, or the wonder that made me stop in the first place.
Q: You use digital tools to add layers of light, texture, and feeling. At what point in the process does an image shift from being about “place” to being about “emotion”?
A: That’s such an interesting question, because the shift doesn’t happen at one set point — it’s more like a conversation between me and the image. When I first take a photograph, it’s always rooted in place. I’m drawn to something specific — maybe the movement of a street in Tokyo, the way the light spills across a canal in Amsterdam, or a quiet corner in Paris that most people would walk right past. In those moments, I’m thinking about composition and capturing what’s in front of me. But once I sit down with the image and start working digitally, the transformation begins.