Irene Young is not your average photographer.

In addition to having photographed musicians for more than 500 CD covers, Young has had four years of training at The Academy of Intuitive Arts. She says that her intuitive training has enabled her to be a better photographer, and having photographed thousands of people has sharpened her intuition. The bi-coastal photographer says, “The art of seeing does not start and stop with our eyes.”

Young states, “ The key to photographing people is to do so with a wide open aperture of the heart, with no judgment, and with a true belief that everyone is beautiful.Young has also been the major on-set photographer for The Sinclair Intimacy Institute’s Better Sex Video Series for over 10 years. She feels it is important to depict human sexuality as beautiful and healthy. A current side project is photographing average women and men delicately out of focus to show that beauty is not about exactitude and detail, but instead about energy and wholeness.

In addition to capturing still images of musicians, actors, and writers for thirty years, Young has produced three videos and a book of photographs. Her poetry has appeared in three anthologies. As a result of her 2005 battle with breast cancer, she produced Glass Half Full, a compilation CD that benefits two breast cancer awareness/prevention organizations. http://www.glasshalffullCD.com.

Over the years, she has also been commissioned to depict AIDS projects in the San Francisco Bay area, and the courageous spirit of young patients in numerous children’s hospitals.

Her clients, too numerous to mention, include Warner Brothers, Columbia, Motown, Windham Hill, Narada, Virgin, Rounder, Red House, and Blix Street Records; Harper Collins, Fawcett, Doubleday, and Henry Holt and Company Publishers; Hewlett Packard, Panasonic, Paula Dorf Cosmetics, Bodymasters, and The World Cup Catalogue.

Her photographs have appeared in many national and international publications, including Us Magazine, Oprah Magazine, The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, People Magazine, and The Utne Reader.

Young has been a guest teacher at The San Francisco Art Institute and The School of Visual Arts in New York City. In 2006 she added web design to the list of her production company’s varied creative services.