MOORHEAD — When she was around age nine, Wendy Gerlach received her first camera as a gift. It wasn’t anything fancy, just an “old school” type that required mailing in the roll of film after 24 shots and waiting to see what came back.
But for her, it was the key to capturing snippets of beauty during camping trips with her family or otherwise being in nature; images made by the original artist: God.
“My dad was a hunter and he would talk to us about not just killing for sport, but for food,” she says. “There was just an appreciation for what God has given us to sustain life, provide joy, and bring us enjoyment.”
And enjoy, she did. “My mom would say, ‘You really have an eye for this. You see things differently.’ I remember being told that from an early age.”
But eventually, Gerlach moved into marriage, motherhood, and helping provide for her family through various entrepreneurial ventures.
It was during her several-decade stint of working her cleaning business that Gerlach hit a wall.
“As I was cleaning a toilet one day, my heart was grumbling. ‘God, I feel so wasted here. There’s got to be more than this; than another toilet, another shower, another kitchen countertop,’” she recalls thinking.
Later, pulling the vacuum cord from the outlet, she noticed something. “The cord had made a perfect treble clef,” Gerlach says. “The message for me there was, ‘Wendy, everything you do is worship to me. Everything. What’s your heart condition looking like right now?’”
It wasn’t the first time she’d sensed God speaking to her through the everyday, but it was a moment that prompted her to be more alert. “If you’re walking through life looking for the messages, he’s going to show them to you.”
It doesn’t require a degree or a special certificate. “You just have to be a noticer; to have that eye to see the world a little bit differently.”
Having a connection with the eternal also helps. “I’m always asking, ‘What’s the message, God? How do you see this? How should I see this?” Gerlach says. “It’s a great way to stay connected with him. He made this beautiful world for us, and how sad that we often get too busy to stop and look.”
Stopping and looking has changed her life. After she began posting pictures of the moments she’d been capturing through her camera phone on social media, others began noticing, including a representative from Essentia Health, who was helping with a remodel of the pediatric cardiology department and wondered if Gerlach’s visuals would be fitting to adorn the walls.
From that inquiry, Gerlach was prompted to create a portfolio of her work, and her hobby blossomed into a full-blown business, Behind the Lens Phone-tography, detailed at wendygerlach.com , through which she has sold her images far and wide and teaches others how to create beautiful photos from a cellphone alone through classes.
Linda Paulson first met her through Gerlach’s Lemongrass skincare business, but later signed up for her phone-tography class. “Every one of her pictures tells a story—every one. I want to take them home and hang them all up. They very much touch the soul,” she says.
Paulson sees the world much like Gerlach. “When you look at nature, how can you not believe that there is this wonderful creator that has put this out here, and that we are privileged to be a part of it?”
But it’s not just evident in Gerlach’s photography, Paulson says. Whenever she walks into the Daily Dose in Fargo, a nutrition-based coffee, tea and bakery bar, and sees Gerlach, who frequents the shop, the room brightens. “She has this great big smile and great big hug. Whether through a simple hello or asking a question, you are the most important person in that moment.”
Noreen Clarke met Gerlach last summer while at a 50th-wedding anniversary that Gerlach was photographing. Later, they sat at the same table and learned they had mutual friends. Clarke had been thinking about her family Christmas card photo and had some creative ideas, but no one to take the photo. It suddenly occurred to her that Gerlach might be the right person to do it.
“So I asked her, right on the spot. I felt very comfortable with her from the beginning,” she says. The Labor Day photo shoot turned out hotter than expected, but despite some trying moments, Clarke says, Gerlach made everyone fill at ease.
“It’s not just the gift of being able to look and see what works, but how to talk everyone through it and make them smile,” she says.
Gerlach says it’s been “amazing to be able to step into someone else’s story, because of something as simple as an image…It’s the power of a photo. It’s the power of social media. And then the relationships—just by being curious about someone else and wanting to know about them.”
Curiosity about nature also can educate us, she says. Take the flamingo—one of her favorites. Gerlach has learned why they’re pink—because of the food they eat—and observes that their “majestically awkward” nature can teach us a thing or two, because, despite being a little strange, they don’t care what others think. “They just celebrate who they were created to be.”
Always in pursuit of those lessons, Gerlach noticed a slab of concrete on the side of the road one day while returning from errands. But something caught her eye. Surrounding the cement were “the most beautiful little yellow wildflowers.” She circled back to take a photo, cherishing the message she intuited: “Even if there are obstacles in your life, look for the beauty, because it’s all around.”
Another time, she was driving near Elizabeth, Minnesota, in the early-morning hours, and noticed the sunlight hitting the cross atop a small church. The horizontal part of the cross, which represents our relationship with others, she says, was shining, while the vertical portion, pointing to our relationship with God, was shadowed.
It reminded her of how truth can be diluted in our politically correct time, she says. “I pictured Jesus hanging on that cross and thought, ‘If we really want to see the heart of God, it’s where the horizontal meets the vertical; that’s where we find his heart.”
Recently, she was delighted to spend a long span of time watching a young bluejay in her backyard drying off from its water bath—and yes, he even gave her enough time to snap a photo, much to her delight.
“When was the last time you just sat and watched the life of what’s happening in your own backyard?” she asks, pointing to Matthew 6:28, where Jesus says, “Learn from the way the wildflowers grow. They do not work or spin.”
To honor God in her work, Gerlach prays before every photo shoot and class, and tucks a bit of Jesus into every photo edit by using at least one setting at 33—Jesus’ final earthly age—and 66—the number of books in the Bible.
“So when people say, ‘It’s so beautiful, it’s so vibrant,’ I know that it’s infused with Jesus,” she says, smiling brightly. “You’re looking at him and you don’t even know it.”
There’s a parallel here with humanity, Gerlach adds. “People are amazing on their own, but when our lives are infused with Jesus, we’re even more beautiful.”
[For the sake of having a repository for my newspaper columns and articles, I reprint them here, with permission, a week after their run date. The preceding ran in The Forum newspaper on June 23, 2024.]
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