The hordes of visitors who descend on the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center today will have the chance to "Meet the Photographer" from 10 a.m. to noon.

Oklahoma City photographer Ellen Jonsson drove down Friday to put up her one-woman show in the gallery. Every photograph in the exhibit was taken on the refuge. The 34 on the walls are framed, and refuge-goers can sift through 55 more matted photos in a basket.

The photos will be up through Sept. 30, but today is the only opportunity to meet the person who took them.

"I'll just answer any questions that anyone has about what I've done or how I did it or what I used or whatever anyone wants to ask," she said.

Though not a professional photographer, Jonsson has been taking photographs for years. She arrived in Oklahoma in 1974 and has been visiting the refuge off and on ever since. Until two years ago, she worked as a director of training programs for the heavy equipment division of Hertz.

"I know more about safe ways to operate machinery and attach trailers than you ever wanted to know. Everything from the very small things like jackhammers and chain saws up to large earth-moving equipment," she said.

Now that she's retired she gets to spend much more time on the refuge doing what she loves. She's been down here "in every season and every weather, every light and every time of day."

"This is kind of an indulgence for me," she said. "What I love down here is the color. That's really inspirational to me. And I like when it's low light or when it's early morning or when the light is different. That's my favorite time to be down here."

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