Bonnie Rannald is a Nevada based nature photographer who focuses her work primarily on the beauty and fragility of the Southwestern Deserts. Growing up in the southern states of Georgia and Florida, Bonnie developed an early childhood fascination for nature as she snapped photos of flowers, lizards and frogs with her Kodak Brownie camera.

When she was not exploring the outdoors, Bonnie was practicing her percussion lessons or working on ballet movements that later influenced her college curriculum when she studied music, dance and movement to receive a B.S. degree from the University of North Texas and a M.A. from Texas Woman’s University.

While perusing her chosen profession as Head Cross Country and Assistant Track and Field Coach at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Bonnie honed her photographic skills by using the camera to analyze athletic performance.

To wind down from the hectic schedule of coaching, Bonnie enjoyed nature walks in the Red Rock Canyon Conservation Area, always taking her camera alone. Spending time in the desert, observing the colorful sunsets or the unique flora and fauna fueled a passion in Bonnie to record on film the beauty that she was encountering.

Around this same time, Bonnie came upon a book entitled The Creation by Ernst Haast which included his breathtaking color photographs taken during a ten year span from around the world showing the magnificence, beauty and power of our planet Earth. Haast’s style of photography became her inspiration and still is today.

In 1990, on a trip to White Sands, New Mexico Bonnie was drawn to an image of a sole yucca growing along the side of a sand dune. After capturing the image, she decided to have the negative enlarged, and was encouraged by the lab to enter the photo in a local photo exhibit. The photograph entitled, “Sand Totem” was the turning point for Bonnie to follow her passion in to the genre of fine art photography.

In 1993 Bonnie’s passion for nature and photography was channeled into a new career when she was invited to participate in her first art show, Summerlin Celebration of the Arts.

Over the years, Bonnie’s nature photography has been exhibited in numerous venues on the state, national and international level. Her photography has been featured in many well-known publications including the Las Vegas Insider Viewpoint, Gold West and Where Magazine, Las Vegas.

In 1997, Bonnie Rannald was interviewed and featured with her photography of Red Rock Canyon on the PBS TV series, Outdoor Nevada.

To further her appreciation for the natural environment, she has worked with various conservation agencies including the Clark County Conservation District, Walker Lake Interpretive Association and the Desert Research Institute. One of the highlights of her career was a photographic assignment of the receding water lines at Walker Lake for the Running Dry Documentary by Jim Thebaut.

Presently, Bonnie continues to use her photographic skills to express the story from nature’s hand and take the viewer on a sensory rich journey from the eastern Sierra through the Great Basin Desert. Living in an area of active geology challenges Bonnie for many interesting scenes that have taken nature eons to create and could be forever lost in the blink of an eye. It is Bonnie’s goal to continue to preserve as much detail in her photographic images as the passage of time will allow.