Born and raised in southern New England, Kimberly Grapski has had a life-long love affair with the outdoors and nature, particularly animals. In recent years she's melded those interests with her passion for outdoor photography to create stunning photos of wildlife, from lions, leopards and loons to elephants and eagles, butterflies and bison. When she's not "shooting" wildlife, she's creating equally striking photos of domestic animals - Icelandic ponies, piglets, mustangs, cattle, and scores of purebred dogs always in natural settings.

Kimberly's early interest in photography was at least partially an outlet for her interest in art. The larger motivation, however, was to capture her three growing children for posterity. But with the "kids grown up," Kimberly turned to the endless photographic opportunities in the natural world.

Kimberly's inherent talent and keen photographic instincts are essentials for an outdoor photographer, but her work also profits from her boundless energy and do-anything-to-get-the-photo mentality, whether that means kayaking on a still lake before dawn to photograph a loon, lying in tidal mud to achieve the perfect angle to frame a Roseate Spoonbill, or huddling on a frigid beach in Alaska. For an outdoor photographer, comfort often takes a vacation.

Kimberly takes a vacation, too, each summer. Before she photographed professionally and her photos had become widely published in calendars, she began a career as an elementary school teacher in her native Connecticut. Fortunately for the current generation of students, she hasn't traded classes for cameras; she has simply become, chuckling as she says it, " more skilled ", continuing her career as an educator while investing more of her discretionary time with cameras or kayaks often paired together in the world outside the classroom.