Photographer
Michele Wedel
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~by Boris Ladwig
rown County resident Michele Wedel has loved music and photography since high school, when she used her father’s Nikon film camera to shoot rock stars, including Aerosmith and Ted Nugent. At the time she dreamed of traveling the world on assignments for Rolling Stone magazine, but a 20-year career in corporate America required her to put those passions aside. However, since she moved to Brown County in 2014, she has found ways to reconnect with them, in part as photographer for the Brown County Music Center, where she has shot concerts of acts including Vince Gill, Halestorm, and Kevin Costner. Wedel had obtained a master’s in adult education and began her career in a student loan company, initially reviewing claims and eventually serving as an officer for the company. She oversaw 18 people in sales and
30 Our Brown County Jan./Feb. 2022
marketing and developed classes to teach students, parents, and teachers about financial literacy, including only borrowing as much as needed. She used that knowledge to start a Brownsburg-based consulting business through which she helped nonprofits such as Sheltering Wings on staff development, corporations such as Shiel Sexton on how to work with remote staff, and the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol on how to handle on-boarding and succession planning. She still teaches classes on financial literacy at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. About a decade ago, when her mother fell ill, Wedel scaled back her consulting work. Her husband, Dale, who works from home as a software engineer for an Indianapolis consulting firm, suggested she pivot to becoming a photographer. Wedel went back to school, got an associate degree at Ivy Tech and launched her photography business. When the couple moved to Brown County in 2014, she did consulting part-time and photography part-time, generating revenue primarily through high school senior photos and product shots for businesses.
