About Cheryl
I’ve been following photography wherever it leads since I was eleven.
I’m Cheryl Kaiser, a Certified Professional Photographer, lifelong learner, storyteller, and the person behind The Photo Archaeologist.
Photography has been part of my life for more than five decades and my profession for more than 35 years. Along the way, I’ve photographed people and places, studied patterns and light, restored damaged photographs, explored family histories, built archives, taught photographers, created reflective experiences, written devotional work, and followed more creative rabbit holes than I could possibly list.
For a long time, I thought those interests needed to fit neatly into a photography business.
I don’t anymore.
I’ve come to recognize them as something much more natural to me: explorations.
Some become bodies of photographic work. Some become projects, workshops, writing, or experiences I share with others. Some simply teach me something and lead to the next question.
What connects them is my enduring fascination with what photography can reveal about our lives.
More Than Photographs
I believe photographs can do far more than show us what something looked like.
They can help us notice.
Remember.
Connect.
Question.
Reflect.
They can reveal something about who we are, where we came from, what we value, and what we might otherwise have overlooked.
That belief has become the North Star behind my work:
I cultivate experiences through photography, reflection, and conversation that help people discover deeper meaning in the moments, memories, and relationships that shape their lives.
Sometimes that means helping a family uncover the stories buried in boxes of photographs.
Sometimes it means restoring an image someone thought was lost.
Sometimes it means walking quietly with a camera and learning to notice what is right in front of us.
Sometimes it means creating something entirely new.
The form changes.
The purpose doesn’t.
The Photo Archaeologist
The name began with my work uncovering and preserving family photographs and their stories. But over time, I realized it described much more of who I am.
An archaeologist looks beneath the surface.
She follows clues.
She notices details.
She preserves what matters.
She searches for connections and asks what they might mean.
That’s essentially what I’ve been doing with a camera all my life.
I’m interested in what lies beneath the photograph—the story, emotion, history, relationship, memory, faith, or meaning it might hold.
And I’m still digging.
Learn. Experience. Invite.
This has become a simple way of understanding how I work.
I learn.
Something catches my attention and I want to know more. It might be an old photographic process, a new technique, family history, contemplative practice, a place, a story, or something I haven’t encountered yet.
I experience.
I need to do more than learn about something. I want to try it, photograph it, make something with it, live with it, and discover what it has to teach me.
I invite.
Then I share what I’ve discovered—through photographs, writing, conversation, teaching, workshops, projects, or experiences—and invite others to make their own discoveries.
Not every exploration becomes a service.
It doesn’t need to.
Curiosity is part of the work.
Photography & Faith
My Christian faith is foundational to how I experience the world and understand my work.
I believe creativity is a gift, attention can become a form of gratitude, and photographs can sometimes help us recognize what we might otherwise hurry past.
I don’t believe I create transformation for another person. That’s not mine to claim.
What I can do is set the table.
I can create circumstances for reflection. Ask a question. Make or share a photograph. Preserve a memory. Tell a story. Create an experience. Hold space for a conversation.
And then trust God with what happens there.
My faith naturally informs my work, but you don’t need to share my beliefs to explore, learn, or work with me. Curiosity, respect, and a willingness to look a little more closely are plenty.
A Lifetime Behind the Camera
I hold a BFA in Photography and am a Certified Professional Photographer. My career has included decades of professional portrait photography as well as photographic education, mentoring, archival and preservation work, restoration, fine-art and contemplative photography, visual storytelling, and personal creative projects.
But credentials and years only tell part of the story.
Photography has been the way I’ve learned about people.
It’s introduced me to families and their histories. It’s sent me digging through archives and walking ancestral ground. It’s helped me pay attention to ordinary beauty. It’s given me ways to explore faith, memory, identity, time, loss, connection, and belonging.
And after all these years, I’m still curious about what it might show me next.
That may be the most important qualification I have.
Come Explore
You’ll find several different paths through my work here.
Explore my photographic projects and current curiosities. Wander through family photographs and legacy. Read something from my journal. Learn to slow down and see through Quiet Photography. Or discover ways we might work together through speaking, mentoring, consulting, workshops, and select projects.
You don’t need to be interested in all of it.
Follow whatever catches your attention.
That’s what I do.