MOORHEAD — Professional photos aren’t just created from a handheld camera anymore.

Wendy Gerlach, of Moorhead, proves how it is possible. She recently created a business called

Behind The Lens Phone-tography

, where she solely takes and edits pictures on her cellphone. She believes that a photo from a cellphone can be just as good as a photo from a professional camera.

She likes to say it’s all about who’s behind the screen taking the picture.

Gerlach started by taking pictures as a hobby. She would take a nice image, edit it on her camera app, and then post it to social media.

She also sold greeting cards of her images. What made the greeting extra special was that it was an actual photo that customers could frame. Gerlach chose to do that because a lot of her customers just liked the image as a whole, and wanted to hang it up in their home. The cards are available at

Minn-Dak Market in West Acres Shopping Center

.

After a while, Gerlach realized her work was more than just a hobby and she wanted to make it an official business for herself.

“I did it as a hobby forever, I just love photography,” Gerlach said. ” I would just shoot pictures of what I saw was cool, and then I’d just share them on social media.”

Not only does Gerlach take the pictures on her cellphone, but she also edits them there as well. She simply uses the camera app editing tools that come free with a phone.

“I edit everything in my phone, I don’t use Photoshop, I don’t use Lightroom, it’s all the settings in my phone,” Gerlach said.

Gerlach feels that a camera and a phone can take an equally fantastic photo. It doesn’t matter how expensive the equipment is, it solely depends on the skill of the person taking the photo.

“You can have a $7,000 camera, and a $7,000 lens and take a really crappy picture”

The big question Gerlach gets is “what kind of phone are you using to take these beautiful photos?”

She is currently using a Samsung, but she has used iPhones before.

You can find some of her photos on display at Essentia Health Cardiac Rehab Center and the Essentia Health Cardiac Clinic.

Phone photography isn’t Gerlach’s full-time job, she also works for Lemongrass Spa in Fargo.

Because her business has blown up, she decided to start offering a “Phone-tography” class. She offers it at the Daily Dose in Fargo. Gerlach describes some of what will be taught in her classes.

“We’ll talk about that in my photography class on framing a photo, positioning yourself, how to get something to look better, we want the picture to tell a story a little more,” Gerlach said.

Behind The Lens Phone-tography is a business created based on a hobby and Wendy is grateful to have started it, but she’s received a little backlash from some people aligned with traditional photography.

“Some of the people in the photography community were like “You’re not a real photographer,” Gerlach said.

But it’s not stopping Wendy. She had a dream, went forward with it, and created a very successful business, one click of the shutter (phone) button at a time.

“It’s been an amazing dream,” she said.

Gerlach can be reached at her

website, WendyGerlach.com

or on

Facebook

at “Behind the Lens Phone-tography.”

Hannah Vig is a Minnesota State University Moorhead student and Forum intern.