About Sally

I’ve had (and continue to have) a varied career as a photographer, digital artist, author, journalist and lecturer. But it all comes down to the same abiding goal and vocation. Whether it's a picture or an article, a workshop or a book, my primary driving purpose, above and beyond communicating concepts, ideas and information, is to tell a good story that will entertain, amuse and enlighten.

Many hundreds of my features, stories, reviews, columns and photo essays have been published in scores of magazines and books, including “Woman’s Day,” “PC Magazine,” "Islands," "Realities," "Lear's," "Popular Science," etc. Over the years, I’ve had the privilege and excitement of traveling on assignment all over the world, to every continent (including Antarctica), plus many exotic islands (such as Papua New Guinea). My pictures have appeared in various ads, books and exhibits. I have written several non-fiction books, mostly on photography, I have recently delivered my first novel “The Winter Boy” to my agent, and I’m working on another, “Jo Joe.” My non-fiction has generally been co-authored with my husband, Daniel Grotta, though our fiction is separate. (Well, one series of novels that we're both working on is set in a fictional village that we've created together. While the locale and many of the characters are the same, the stories are quite separate and rather different from each other.)

Considered a pioneer in the field of digital photography and creative imaging, a number of my photo-related achievements can be regarded as “firsts.” (Of course, we all know what they say about pioneers – that you can identify them by the number of arrows in their backs.) I’ve been told that my one-woman show in the early 1990s at the Apple Market Center in midtown Manhattan may have been the first all-digital exhibition in New York City . Daniel’s and my “Digital Imaging for Visual Artists” (published in 1993 by McGraw-Hill) is regarded as having been a ground-breaking, industry-defining book. Daniel and I were the first instructors of digital photographic technology at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York City. We also wrote the first articles on digital photography and imaging for many magazines, were “PC Magazine’s” digital photography gurus, and have conducted many workshops and seminars on digital photography and imaging throughout the country. Our most recent non-fiction book is “PC Magazine Digital SLR Photography Solutions” (John Wiley), which was published this past spring.

The one thing that I always try to get my students, audiences and readers to understand is that photography – whether it’s film or digital – isn’t about the camera or the technology. It’s about seeing the world through your lens and communicating what you’ve seen. When you think of it, that isn’t very different from what it takes to write a good article or book. That’s why my photography and my writing inform and strengthen each other, coming, as they do, from the same instinct for storytelling. Capturing the small details, the nuanced gesture, the ambience of the moment and the hidden meaning, in words or pictures, that's what makes me feel excited to be alive. Of course, then I get to manipulate it, to express the essential core... as I see it.