Angela Maloney

Hi! My name is Angela Maloney. I'm a photographer based in Alexandria, Virginia.

The name of my website, The Place Changes Me, comes from an Instagram page I created back in 2016. At the time, I was a U.S. Foreign Service Officer. That's easily among the most interesting jobs a person can have, especially for someone like me. I have a major case of wanderlust. And it's a job where you must explore the world.

Exploring has changed me over time. I think it has changed me for the better. It has certainly taught me a lot.

Unfortunately, I became disabled by my service. The disability led to my early retirement. Being left to sit in my living room doing nothing hit me hard. And learning to live with a significant, if non-obvious, disability affecting my hands and wrists has not been easy. Think about all you do every day that requires your hands. Then imagine you had a very limited amount of hand usage per day and the limit was enforced by severe pain. That's me.

I started finding something to do with myself again in early 2021, when several of my friends approached me one after another and asked me to write a book of my photos. One of them even gave me a title, "Through My Eyes." At the time, I hadn't picked up a camera since 2017. My friends got me thinking about what sort of things I have paid for the privilege of doing in the past: traveling the world and sharing my sense of wonder. And I realized I had just described being a photographer. So I invested in a more modern Sony mirrorless camera. And I started to really try at photography for the first time in my life.

I'm writing this at the end of September 2021. And once again, the places I go and the experiences I have are changing me. I'm learning that the limits on my wrists may be a gift when it comes to photography. I can't spend all day taking hundreds or thousands of photos. I have to make every image count. So most of my time when shooting is spent looking around, planning the image. I tend to actually take very few. And that means I get more good ones.

I like to think sense of wonder is my specialty. At the same time, I try to use my photography to make a difference. I figure that if people can see the world and all its creatures and all its people through my eyes, then it will affect them just as it does me. We'll all see how precious and rare and special we all are. And we'll treasure one another and the world around us always.

Maybe a place can change more than me.