CityView Magazine

CityViewNC.com | 11 M oving to Germany and turning 40 sparked a dream for Holly Hulse. And in six short years, she made that dream come true by following her passion for fashion photography. Hulse, who is married to an Apache helicopter pilot based at Fort Bragg's Simmons Army Airfield, had been working since she was 15. She was working at Walt Disney World in 1996, which is where she met her husband, Jonathan, while he was on a Single Soldiers weekend. Aer they were married in 2002, she got her real estate license and worked in Fayetteville for more than a decade. When Jonathan was stationed in Germany in 2016, she started thinking about what she really wanted in life. "I turned 40 in Germany, and I took a break for the first time in my life,'' Hulse says. "For the first time, I could decide what made me happy." With her husband's full support, she started taking a lot of hikes and renewed her love for photography. "I loved my camera, but it was my grandfather, Pfc. Michael Stencel, that was my inspiration,'' she says. "I was always intrigued by his camera, and his advice was to always have a camera because you never know the memory you are going to capture. "He was a photographer, too, and encouraged me to take my first photo. I think it was of my feet, but he told me to take it," she says with a laugh. Her enthusiasm went to a deeper level when she started looking through her grandfather's World War II photo albums. "I decided that I wanted to retrace his steps while in Europe," Hulse says. Her grandfather took photos while he was in the Army serving in the war. Hulse started not only finding the locations where his photos were taken but recreating the pictures from his albums while learning some of the finer tricks of composition and focus. It was as if her grandfather was teaching her and guiding her to a career in photography. "One of the most poignant photos that I took was of a liberated concentration camp. I stood in the exact same spot he did, took the picture, and it struck something in me,'' Hulse says. "I knew in that moment that I wanted to do this; I wanted to be a photographer. I didn't know what type, and I didn't know how to get started, but I knew I wanted to be a storyteller." Another meaningful location was Normandy, France. Picture perfect Inspired by her grandfather to follow her dreams, Holly Hulse is making her mark in the world of fashion photography. BY JAMI MCLAUGHLIN | PHOTOGRAPHY BY TONY WOOTEN © HOLLY HULSE PHOTOGR APHY

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