My name is Mary Hulshouser and I’m a USPS retention operations specialist based in Fort Worth, TX.
When I’m not working, you can find me outside — behind a lens, taking photographs of nature.
I’ve always had a camera, but it was in the spring of 2022 that I started getting serious about nature photography. I bought a really nice camera, then a couple of lenses, then a big zoom lens.
The key to taking good photos is practice and patience.
I never thought I would have the patience like I do now. I always hated driving, but now I will travel for hours to find a good shot.
Then you sit there for three hours, and you could take 200 pictures, and you might have four or five that pop out at you.
I went to Sedona, AZ, last year for a few days and I got some shots of a great horned owl that had nested in a cactus. She was brooding on eggs.
I decided to go back there for vacation this year. I was up at 4 a.m. every day and got another photo of the owl — this time with one of the babies.
I’ll look at the photos that I took when I first started and think I could have done better. I’m sure in another three years, I’ll look back at today’s pictures and think the same. It’s a learning process.
I won first place at the Texas State Fair last year for a photo of a pair of great egrets in their mating plumage, and there’s a Texas bank that runs contests that I’ve won for a couple of years. One of my photos was also chosen for the Fort Worth Report’s monthly photo contest, and I was recently contacted by BirdNote requesting one of my photos to be included in their 2026 calendar.
But my dream is to have my photos on postage stamps one day.
“Off the Clock,” a column on Postal Service employees and their after-hours pursuits, appears regularly in Link. Email us your feedback. Your comments could be included in our “Mail” column.
