About the Author...Barbara J. Kurtz

Barbara Kurtz was born in Colorado, raised in Illinois, and graduated from high school and college in Tucson, Arizona.  After graduating from the U of A, Barb married Ken, a professional baseball player.  They both loved the sun and didn’t mind the heat, so it was Tucson where they settled and raised two children.  With a degree in Education (K-12), she taught a variety of life skills classes at the high school, level her favorite being Child Development.  Her first camera, a Kodak Brownie, was a birthday present when she was six. She was thrilled with it and slipped into the role of family historian.  When she retired from teaching, photography then developed into a serious hobby.  It was then that she acquired a DLSR camera.  She began learning about her new camera by taking photos of the birds in her backyard.  The day she spotted a hummingbird bathing at their fountain was the day she became hooked on capturing and perfecting shots of these quick tiny birds.  Fortunate enough to live in Tucson, Arizona where the world famous Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and its hummingbird aviary are located, she spends much of her free time there.