How It Began

Within the past two years, I have become more and more interested in photography. I made the decision to enroll into JVS to pursue my passion in the Digital Media Arts program. My interest all started when my best friend Skylar joined a photography class at her school. She then bought a professional camera. It was a Canon with a zoom lens and inside her camera bag she also had a short lens for more landscape pictures. This was fascinating to me because i had never taken a picture with a professional camera like hers. One day she saw how interested I was when she was taking pictures with it and asked me if I wanted to try. Of course, I jumped at this opportunity. I picked up the camera (which was much heavier than I had expected) and looked around the room for something to take a picture of. The first thing that caught my eye was a group of yellow daisies, because they were drooping and missing some petals. They were unique and beautiful in their own way. The water in the vase was musty and had pieces of the dead leaves floating on top - which in my eyes only added character to the picture.

After I had taken the picture, I asked Skylar to give me her opinion on it. She looked at it and said it impressive for your first picture with a new camera. This had me jumping with joy and when it was time for me to go home, I walked home and I asked my dad if I could get a camera like the one Skylar had and he said “Sure, if you pay for it - they aren’t cheap”. This only gave me motivation. While I was working at Kmart, I made sure to not spend any of my money, unless it was absolutely necessary. In the meantime, my dad had been researching deals on cameras to come up with a price that was reasonable. He then found a used camera that came with two lenses and a camera bag. It would only cost me four hundred dollars. The day I got my camera I went all around the house taking pictures of anything and everything. Whether it be my pets, my family, the couch, or the dinner that we had that night, I captured it all.

One day Skylar’s grandpa, who happened to be a professional photographer, asked me how my photography was going. It had a rough start, but I had gotten better at it as time passed. Skylar’s Grandpa asked to see some of my photos. The first few photos were just of my dogs in the backyard playing - nothing special.Then I scrolled over one more. It was my humming bird picture. Skylar’s grandpa paused and looked a little longer than he had at my other photos. After a long moment, he told me that it was one of the best ones that he had seen outside of a magazine. This comment really gave me hope that one day I could possible be a photographer. To this day, I still go on photo hikes with Skylar and her grandpa, learning new stuff and receiving feedback on my work. The next year for my birthday, Skylar framed the first picture I had taken with her camera. I will always have the beginning of my adventure to look back and remember how it all began.