Lawrence High senior Stefanie Stuever is a versatile artist who works with ceramics, painting, drawing but receives most of the attention for her work with photography.

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Imagination, photo by Stefanie Stuever.

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Stefanie Stuever barely even remembers the specific moment. It happened so quickly.

She was in her backyard with a young neighbor friend who was afraid of dogs. But for one fleeting second, the girl and Stuever’s dog locked eyes at close range, intent on checking out each other.

Stuever’s index finger squeezed the shutter on her camera.

“Just luck of the moment, I guess,” Stuever says. “I just happened to be standing there and snapped it. And I didn’t even, of course, know what I got until I got in here and developed it.”

But Angelia Perkins, photography teacher at Lawrence High School, says it’s more than luck. In Stuever, she’s seen a compositional eye that’s uncommon for high school students.

That eye earned Stuever the ArtStar award for the month of October. The award is sponsored by The World Company and Jayhawk Dental.

“She really just has a natural eye for photography,” Perkins says. “And she has this sweetness. It’s funny, there’s this angst with high school kids, so you always get that angst and anger coming out in all the photos. And Stefanie has this way of just adding this sweetness into her images, and really brings almost like this compassion that really draws people into her photographs.”

Stuever, a senior, took some photos for fun when she was a child, but she didn’t become serious about photography until she took a class at Southwest Junior High School.

Then, she started gaining inspiration and encouragement from Perkins at LHS.

“I just like photography because it captures things at that moment – the way they are,” Stuever says. “You can’t really do that with any other art form. I love ceramics and other things I’ve been trying, but you can’t capture it exactly how it is.”

Film vs. digital

In a world dominated by digital photography, Stuever – like other LHS photo students – keeps a foot in the past while embracing new technology.

She shoots with both a film camera and develops the black-and-white negatives and prints in the LHS darkroom. At the same time, she uses a digital camera and uses the benefits of software to touch up her images.

“Having the actual negatives and having to deal with, like, hand-focusing it in the darkroom and cleaning your negatives and trying to get all the dust off, it’s more of a challenge,” she says. “But I definitely think it’s good to start there, so you know how it all works initially and how people got started doing it.”

Her favorite subjects are children.

“My neighbors down the street, I’ve been shooting them forever,” Stuever says. “I like capturing the idea of childhood and kind of like what’s going through their minds. I just take them places and now it’s really natural because they just play and I take pictures.”

Stuever’s images have earned her some acclaim the past few years. Her works have been exhibited at several locales around town, and they’ve been featured in publications such as the annual calendar published by Douglas County Senior Services.

In addition, she has taken senior photos and family photos on the side, and she’s been the official photographer for events at the Lawrence Humane Society.

Meanwhile, she keeps busy when she doesn’t have a camera in her hand as well. She’s a successful athlete, having qualified this year for the state cross country meet and to start on the soccer team. She’s also president of the National Arts Honor Society at LHS.

‘Creative spark’

Lately, Stuever has been taking ceramics and drawing classes to diversify her portfolio for college. She says those media bring out a different side to her creativity, since they’re not as precise as photography.

But Perkins sees some commonality among the way Stuever approaches the various art forms.

“I think she has a creative spark in her which is never going to go away,” Perkins says. “She signed her images on the back with a little star, and I think the star really kind of shows that spark of creativity. … I don’t think there’s a choice on whether or not she creates. I think she has to create in whichever form that she chooses.”

Stuever plans to major in art in college. But she’s looking to add a layer of depth to her art.

“I definitely would like to continue doing stuff with photography,” she says. “But recently I’ve been looking at art therapy. … Why not do art and help people? I think that would be fun.”