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Photography has been a lifelong hobby for Kurt Skyba. He bought his first camera when he was 19 to photograph landscapes and people from his travels. Kurt was never satisfied with the quality of commercially photo-processed prints. In the 1980s he stopped taking pictures because of poor quality and expensive processing. In the 1990’s, as digital cameras and printers evolved, he began to explore the parameters of the new technology and was finally able to get prints that satisfied him. With the new cameras he could capture the essence of what he saw and with the new printers he could control the image.

Kurt photographs the natural world— landscapes, birds in flight, animals in their environment—and custom prints and frames each photograph. He has over 400 images of hummingbirds. He approaches photography like hunting; once he finds the right background, he waits and watches until the lighting conditions and subject are just right. Currently he’s working with multi-frame panoramas and exploring computer generated photography, which is a generation removed from a photograph—more like a painting.

Trained as a Master Painter in Germany, Kurt’s education formed the foundation for a lifelong career in visual imagery, with a focus on mastering the media. He apprenticed for three years as a house painter, and five years as a journeyman in Scandanavia working as a car painter. He studied applied art for four years at Hanover Academy.

During a career in silkscreening, Kurt invented new techniques including a plexiglass sign painting process that dramatically reduced industry costs. After managing a silkscreen printing business, he began custom painting high end European cars, and then began working in industrial design, inventing and patenting products including deer stands and no-knot rope ratchet tie-downs.

Kurt lives with his wife Margaret on a lake in Waushara County in a house he designed and built. They met in an art class while he was exploring other media, including drybrush, portraits in pencil and charcoal, sharpie sketches and watercolor. Margaret is also an artist and a sign painter, and you can see her work in the Library, the park and the cemetery in Wild Rose.

For more information and to purchase photographs, you may email him at kurtskyba@centurytel.net.