Erica Kraft thought she might be ready to show her work. Then her photos won two awards.

Erica Kraft’s photography career was launched by the beauty of Monterey County.

“It’s very easy to get inspired in this area,” says the Monterey resident. Kraft grew up in Salinas and has been hiking around the county for years, iPhone in hand. But the pictures were “not doing justice” to spectacular reality. So she picked up a camera and soon learned that it would take years of work and experience to become a professional photographer.

It also took time before she decided her photographs were good enough to enter a contest. When she did, her photos of Yellowstone National Park won second and fourth place in April 2025 at the 2024 Wiki Loves Monuments photography competition, organized by Wikimedia, the movement behind Wikipedia, and announced this April.

Wiki Loves Monuments wasn’t on Kraft’s radar, but when she learned about it, the photos from her trip to Yellowstone came to mind. She uploaded them to Wikimedia Commons – and then waited.

The second-place photo shows a sunset by Yellowstone’s Old Faithful Inn, framed by a plume of steam rising from one of the nearby geysers. Kraft photographed it with the backdrop of dark woods and silver sky.

With new confidence after the strong showing, Kraft is developing her local photography business, with a focus on interior designs, hoping to combine commercial and art photography. This spring she has a headshot session for graduating students at Hartnell College.

Despite her interest in interior design, Kraft cannot resist working with landscapes.

“No design ever took my breath away as landscapes do,” she says. That’s due to constant changes in the outside experience. Light, air or color can create a different atmosphere within seconds. She recently photographed northern lights, which were on her photographic bucket list. She caught them in Nevada and the experience was jaw-dropping.

Until now Kraft has been showing – on her website and Instagram – color photography, but she hopes to pursue black-and-white photography in the future. As mentors, she lists pastor/photographer Charles Stanley and Christy Odom from San Diego.

View Erica Kraft’s photography online at fotokraftmedia.com. See the winning contest photos at commons.wikimedia.org.