One of my dear friends, Sonja, hired me to do her headshot before she moved from Harrisburg to Philadelphia. I had a blast, not only because I love spending time with her, but also because I got to play with my then-brand-new PocketWizards, enabling me to cast light at will via radio transmission. They're awesome. And Sonja is too. So with her permission, ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Sonja Bontrager, the Music-Maker!

I've known Sonja since being in college with her and watching her grow there (in addition to many other fun times) obtaining her B.A. in music composition. But Sonja has been making music as long as she was old enough to speak, making up songs in the car and devouring her parents' record collection (where both of us independently of each other discovered the Beatles' greatness, actually). After 12 years of piano lessons (starting at age 7), four years of vocal training, and her degree, Sonja learned the business of being a professional musician while working as the Director of Education at the Harrisburg Symphony. It was great to have her just a stone's throw from Baltimore; every now and again I'd travel up to see the symphony perform and keep tabs on her latest activities.

But that was not to be forever... just recently in May of this year, she daringly decided to strike out on her own and moved to Philadelphia to find work as a musician. Cat-sitter and dog-walker by day, Sonja teaches voice and piano lessons around the city at night. She writes her own songs, and currently performs on keys and vocals with The Marc Lomax Band (a reggae-blues-rock experience), and in her Harrisburg-based band, Smoke the Groove.

With a penchant for analog synths and circuit-bending, Sonja has incorporated these electronic delights in projects for Moviate (film screenings, art festivals, and more) with the Mystery Frogmen's Orkestra (also based in Harrisburg). I had the wonderful privilege of hearing their original soundtrack for Moviate's screening of Nosferatu, which was as strange and creepy as the movie itself. Her appetite for music is as vast as her range of influences, all of which I have heard blasting from her stereo in our dorm room and vehicle -- concert music like Beethoven, Krenek, Weill and Rachmaninoff, choral music & oratorio, reggae, trip-hop, indie hip-hop, opera, musical theatre, post-rock, experimental & noise, jazz, blues, world music and good ol' piano rock all have a place in her lexicon. I can always count on Sonja to expand my musical horizons.

For this portrait, I wanted to catch Sonja's quietly (but furiously) burning energy and professionalism. She does as she pleases with her compositions, but maintains a high standard for herself, which carries through into everything she does. Surrounding her with light on all sides and ratcheting the contrast serves to emphasize her rock star hair and accentuate the beautiful mixtures of color in her eyes.