Lakewood Ranch photographer embarks on picture-perfect endeavor

As a working woman and entrepreneur, Kathryn DeYoung looked at retirement as a death sentence.

Now, it’s the means by which she might become famous.

“I feared it,” the 64-year-old DeYoung said of retirement. “I should have done it sooner. It’s a chance to reinvent yourself.”

In her case, DeYoung has become a photo digital artist — a master of manipulating images.

DeYoung pointed to a black-and-white photo of a body builder ripping his shirt off. A train tunnel makes for a unique background, but that’s not where the photo was taken. DeYoung took the body builder image herself and combined it with another.

“The skill is trying to have it where no one can tell,” she said. “The whole key is making it look real.”

DeYoung sees her newfound passion as a path for feeding her ambition, competitive nature and love of learning.

“I want people to know my name,” DeYoung said. “I want people who have something of mine to feel they have something of value.”

DeYoung grew up in New York, the daughter of optician Walter Mazzanti, who revolutionized the eyeglasses industry with a way to manufacture parts for eyeglass frames. DeYoung entered the family business at age 13, helping with various tasks, until she took over the business at 35 years old. Her father was ready to retire and the company had lost profitability because of competition from China.

“It’s lucky I’m aggressive,” DeYoung said.

She expanded the business into the printing industry, shifting its focus away from making its own products to creating them for other companies. 

She used the equipment to print logos and other icons on cups or other merchandise customers wanted and even offered them warehouse space. She lived at the factory, renting out her Battery Park apartment for $5,000 a month so she could pay staff salaries as she tried to turn the company around.

She married her husband, John DeYoung, at age 41. John joined the business, Zan Optics Products, in 2005. The couple made a good living, but worked tirelessly, on holidays and weekends.

“I loved it. He hated it,” she said. “In 2012, my husband wanted to retire. We were working nonstop.”

DeYoung was proud of the product they delivered. She liked solving problems and generating new business. But she was consumed by work.

Retirement, she said, was what you do when you are ready to die and give up on life. She resisted until five years ago. They sold their New York apartment and a condominium the couple had owned in Heritage Harbour since 2006 to buy their home at Country Club East.

“I came here, and every day I was crying,” DeYoung said. “I didn’t know what to do.”

She volunteered at HOPE Family Services and other nonprofits, joined lunch groups and even an independent film club.

“I’m an extremist,” DeYoung said. “I still wasn’t happy because I wasn’t producing anything of value. I had no tangible item to show for this stuff.”

That’s when friend Susan Jordan at a Sarasota Newcomers Luncheon recommended photography.

“I thought to myself, ‘How hard could it be?’” DeYoung said. “You just click a button.”

But she soon learned she was wrong. She started with a simple point-and-shoot camera, photographing women at the luncheons she attended.

“I wasn’t proud of them,” she said of her photographs. “I wanted to make the (women) look beautiful.”

She wanted to make their skin glow, take away the sunken look from their eyes. She joined the Lakewood Ranch Digital Photography Club in June 2015 and launched a quest to learn. As soon as she experienced the group’s “Share your work” initiative, at which members showcase their photos at monthly meetings, she was hooked.

“That brought out my competitive instincts,” DeYoung said. “The same people were winning month after month. That got my goat. I realized this is a place for me to shine.”

In August 2015, she enrolled in Pinellas Technical College’s commercial photography program and told her teacher she was in it to “win competitions.” She then joined the Tampa Professional Photographer’s Association and the Bay Professional Photographer’s Association.

DeYoung jokes she now owns every photo editing software program created. She longs to master each on her quest to make her own pictures more like art than a photograph.

“I love to retouch. I’m meticulous. I don’t mind tedious tasks,” she said. “It’s a challenge to me. I like photo digital artistry. I want to turn a photo into artwork.”

On Feb. 22, one of her images won first place in Manatee Technical College’s regional Skills USA competition and advanced to state competition.

John DeYoung said he’s amazed at his wife’s dedication to the craft.

“She’s always given 110% with everything, but I’ve never seen her so focused on learning and understanding all the different methods of photography and the ways you can create photography,” he said. “With this, it’s for the love, the job of doing something. Once she started getting into photography and saw all the things she could do with the picture or the computer … and how she could bend that picture to fit the vision she had, it was truly amazing. I’m proud of her.”

In the past year, Kathryn DeYoung won third place in the Bay Professional Photographer’s Association “Top 10 Photographers of the Year,” and fifth place in the same contest for the Tampa Professional Photographer’s Association.

She’s in MTC’s digital design program five days a week for the next 11 months, working to be certified as an Adobe Photoshop master. She says she cannot wait to accomplish more. 

“I’m in an environment where the sky is the limit,” DeYoung said.