Dinah Satterwhite hand-tints her way into a striking

aesthetic niche.

With unbridled enthusiasm, Dinah Satterwhite fills her days with the things she loves best.

Family comes first, followed closely by her art, her competitive tennis and her piano.

Then there are her gardens, the series of note cards she designs and the occasional photography classes she gives.

“I’m blessed with a lot of skills, which I take a little bit of credit for,” Satterwhite said. “It’s a little bit of my German background. I want to be efficient and doing good things. I learn to balance it better and better.”

On the surface, her background in the high-tech world, marketing and advertising belie her creative achievements. In reality, they enhance the multifaceted business she grew from her Bainbridge Island home: hand-coloring black-and-white photographs, giving piano lessons and consulting with artists who want to further their careers.

She also is the founder and manager of the Bainbridge Island Arts Walk’s Student Art Contest.

For years, Satterwhite hopscotched the country, from St. Louis – where she attended nearby Principia College – to Orlando to Denver and Ogden, Utah.

She honed her skills with each journey, becoming more adept with computer and graphic design skills, team management and problem-solving, all the while drawing on some part of her creative side.

Marriage brought her to Bainbridge Island eight years ago. She left the corporate world behind to concentrate on starting a family. Her son, Cort, is nearly a year old.

Having been through so much to add a baby to her life, she now wants to spend as much time with him as possible before he starts school.

Satterwhite uses black-and-white and infrared film and husband Rob’s Nikon N90, “a very, very high-end old classic kind of camera.” She hasn’t gone digital for her professional life. She saves that camera for personal photography.

Satterwhite hand-colors her photos using an 65-year-old process, specialized paper and time-honored Marshall’s oils. Hand-coloring brings out the subtleties of the subject matter and imparts a dreamy quality to the image.

“It started with people trying to take conventional black-and-white photos and spruce them up,” she said. “I work with negatives that go into a darkroom – a gal on Bainbridge Island does this for me – and develop them onto paper with chemicals that allows me to put the oil paint down. You don’t use very much (of the oils). You spread it out with Q-tips and cotton balls.”

Satterwhite doesn’t know how she’ll color the photos until she gets the contact sheet back and the process begins. Sometimes she colors one bit of the scene; sometimes the entire shot.

It is a process that evolved with each step, she said, adding when she’s taking photos, she’s “just seeing shapes and some kind of balance in the image.”

When she looks at a dock and sees the mist and sun hitting it, her eyes are reading color. Holding the contact sheet, “now it’s black and white and totally different,” she said. “I can narrow it down to what is hand-colorable and what would be interesting.”

The hand-coloring part of the process is “kind of tedious work,” she said. Hand-coloring an 8-by-10 photo can take her 40 to 60 hours on the most detailed work. On the least detailed, it takes three to five hours, not including drying time.

Satterwhite offers custom portrait services, as well as original images for sale. Her detailed website explains the processes she uses and features a mini-gallery of her work.

In addition, she participates in about five art shows a year – down from 10 to 12. Her favorite is the island’s Studio Tours. She continues designing two greeting card lines, one of which involves a series of photos, such as “Tuscany Doors” and “Classic Cars,” reproductions of hand-colored photographs.

The other line of cards, called Simply Dinah, features inspirational quotes that she embellishes with handmade paper.

“Each of my pictures has a story,” Satterwhite said. “Ask me and I will share it with you.”