Before looking through a camera lens, my future was… well, blurry. Constantly switching my line of thought for potential careers; from wanting to be an archeologist, a science teacher, a corporate desk job, or even a nail salon technician. Safe to say I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life until I got my hands on a Nikon DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) camera back in my sophomore yearbook/photography club in high school.
From there I learned the basics on the different camera settings and what each had to offer. Starting out with no idea how to work a camera, falling back on either aperture or shutter priority was my go to for events at the time. Using the manual mode oddly intimidated me and I found myself lost with the exposure triangle method at times. Thinking back I cringe at that thought since I only ever shoot manual now and the type of compositions I shot at the time. Anyways, I stuck to the two settings I felt most comfortable with and worked on different compositions with the sports events happening at school, simple artistic shots I found borrowing that camera, or the events the school held. I loved being able to capture the events themselves, people enjoying themselves, all while creating a compelling composition for people to view.
As I continued shooting, the more passion I developed for this discipline and a bad case of mis-organizing photos (luckily I’ve gotten much better with organizing). I was fortunate enough to receive my first (and still shooting with presently) Canon Rebel T6i DSLR later that year as a Christmas gift. As time passed, I also found value in experimenting with different photo genres and pushing my camera to its different capabilities. Presently, I’ve been really interested in nature centered photography- landscape, macro, or wildlife photography.
Thanks for learning about my photography backstory. I hope everyone’s been having a good start to their summers! It’s definitely been a packed last two weeks for me with finals, moving out of dorms, and traveling for my sister’s graduation in Indiana. I’ve gotten the chance to continue writing for the blog over the summer and I’m excited to share more story based blogs, along with my current photography adventures, with everyone!
See you in my next post (hint: some embarrassing first projects will be included), yasou!