By Conor Risch

After graduating with a degree in sociology, Lisa Wiseman decided to spend another three years getting a second bachelor of arts degree, this time in photography. Thanks to her parents, who didn't balk when she told them she wanted to do something that "potentially made no money," the decision was not the largest hurdle she faced early in her career.

"Getting all of my work to look like it came from one person, and then getting it to look like it came from me was a long process," says Wiseman, who has photographed both portraits and fashion for assignments. "Rewarding, but long."

Part of that process was finding the confidence to shoot the world as she saw it. "I tried to shoot what felt resonant to me instead of what you see out there as fashion," she says.

Wiseman says she likes to make quiet photographs of small details and of "in-betweens," moments that evoke a feeling that something has just happened or is about to. "I always want to make images that cause the viewer to stop and wonder what the story was," she says. Yet Wiseman does not work with a specific narrative in mind.

"I don't think there needs to be a specific story to look for universally evocative, transitional moments," she says.

These days she is focusing on her fine-art work, but says, "I would love to secure advertising or other commercial work that is model- or fashion-based that is quiet and contemplative." Her eventual goal is to have a career like Larry Sultan's or Todd Hido's. "They are both fine-art photographers who have careers in which their style is parlayed effectively commercially," she says. "I would love to be known as a fine-art photographer who also shot fashion, not the other way around."

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