Tasting room with a view

If a picture is indeed worth a thousand words, then author and photographer Julie Ilkanic Butler will have no issue making her word count. Butler’s photographic landscapes and nature scenes are currently on display at Sonoma Enoteca, a tasting room and wine shop located on the historic Sonoma Plaza.
Butler, the author of the novel “Shadows on the Mountains” and the self-help tome “Beginning Again: Facing the Changes in Your Life with Courage and Hope,” first caught the shutterbug while attending Notre Dame College of Ohio.
“I remembered having classes and assignments and the very first picture that I took is hanging in my house, even now. I went to Notre Dame and it was a picture of a beautiful statue of the blessed Virgin Mary at our chapel. It was black and white and there were beautiful shadows behind her. It’s a white marble statue with that shadow,” recalled Butler. “I got an ‘A’ and I thought, ‘Hey! Maybe there’s a future in this for me!’”
For Butler this future in photography presently includes her past – namely her extensive travels through scenic locales such as the Grand Canyon, and Red Rock Canyon in Sedona, Ariz., Niagra Falls and western Pennsylvania, among other destinations she has captured on film. Of course, Butler, who has lived in Sonoma for 13 years, would be remiss not to have beauty shots of the valley.
“It’s so beautiful in Sonoma that you can’t take a bad picture, I don’t think,” observed Butler, who occasionally works at the tasting room showcasing her work. “One day, we had people visiting from Pennsylvania and they looked at my pictures and they said, ‘Wow. This grapevine is beautiful!’ Then I said, ‘Well, not only can you see a picture of where you’re at now, I have a picture of Pennsylvania!’”
Such occurrences are relatively frequent for Butler who has seen much of America through the lens of her camera. To wit, Sonoma’s many visitors and transplants often recognize where they’ve come from in one of Butler’s images.
“There are some people that moved to Sonoma from somewhere else and chances are I have a shot of their hometown somewhere in my files,” laughed Butler, whose creative process is nearly Zen-like in its simplicity – she literally starts with “the big picture.”
“You’re looking for a scene, especially if you’re walking through the vineyards and it’s gorgeous,” she explained. “But then you look at a foreground element, and ask ‘how you can zoom in, how you can crop in?’ The beautiful picture is the starting place and I believe that, like in life, people don’t get the big picture, which I think is important to do, but then you look for something else.”
In Butler’s case, the big picture has regularly included Sonoma, which she photographs during strolls downtown or on assignment for winery clients such as Sonoma-based B Wise Vineyards.
“I walk along the Plaza and I see all these tourists taking pictures and I think, ‘They have the right idea. I think everybody in Sonoma should be out taking pictures.’ They should be capturing the beauty of this place,” said Butler. “In every aspect of Sonoma there is something to capture and it’s right here at our fingertips.
Julie Ilkanic Butler’s photographs can be viewed and purchased from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Wednesday through Monday and from 3 to 6 p.m., Tuesdays at Sonoma Enoteca, 35 E. Napa St., Sonoma. 707.935.1200.