FARGO — Once you meet Annie Goldade and hear her story, her leap from registered nurse to owl enthusiast doesn’t seem strange at all. After all, owls are wise, patient, observant caregivers — all characteristics that make excellent nurses. And while growing up in Breckenridge, Minnesota, Goldade was that soft-hearted animal lover who could leave no injured squirrel or orphaned raccoon kits behind.
Goldade dreamed of a career helping animals long before she graduated from nursing school at the University of North Dakota 10 years ago. There was only one problem: She was allergic to animals. “So I’d volunteer at the vet clinic and the Humane Society and I’d be sneezing and eating Benadryl the whole time.
And so then I thought, ‘OK, I’ll do people instead,” Goldade said, laughing, from the tiny, spare studio she shares with several other photographers in downtown’s Black Building. “I love my job though.” Today, Goldade has found the perfect way to meld her full-time work as a Sanford home-health and wound nurse with a side hustle photographing owls, wildlife and the occasional human.
“People will be like, ‘Oh wildlife photography, that’s so random.' And I’m like, ‘Actually, it kind of makes sense,” she said. Today, she is one of the artists whose work is displayed at local businesses through the Arts Partnership’s ArtWORKS rotating gallery.
People also find her work under Annie G Photography on Facebook and Instagram (annieg.photography). A s.