A self-taught fine art and editorial photographer, Laurie Swope began her career as a small town newspaper reporter and photographer in New England and continued on as a freelance photojournalist for various publications. Laurie credits her years working for daily newspapers and covering diverse and unique subjects for her passion documenting lesser known communities. Laurie's fine art photography ranges from portrait, to landscape, to unconventional lifestyles. It has been exhibited in galleries in Venice, Siena, Athens, Crete, Johnson City, Texas, Boston,Winchester and Marblehead, Massachusetts. Laurie's long term project "Through the Ice" documents a small community of daily cold water immersion enthusiasts as they gather, break ice, and plunge in a frozen New England pond throughout the winter season. A practitioner of cold water immersion herself, it is the first time Laurie has been a member of the community she was documenting. She cold plunges several times a week all year round in both the ocean and nearby pond. She lives in a small New England town with her husband and two teenage sons.