I’ve been asked a lot recently why I decided to become a photographer, and answering that question has been kind of hard for me. I haven’t come up with a short and simple answer yet, but I can tell you about a bunch of individual moments and experiences that led me here. It’s been an interesting part of my life to reflect on, so if you’d like to know more – keep reading below and check back in a few days for Part 2! I didn’t intend to write a novel when I started this, but I think my enthusiasm made it impossible to be brief on the subject. (You’ve been warned!)
How it all began…
I became interested in photography at a very young age. To be honest I don’t even remember what the “spark” was for that – but it must have been pretty strong, as my parents invested in a really amazing camera to give to a 10 year-old. I will never forget that Christmas, it is one of my most-vivid childhood memories. I even remember that my mom had wrapped each individual part separately for me to open, but then she couldn’t remember what was what and I ended up opening them in the “wrong” order. Of course, I didn’t care what order they were in, I was just so thrilled to actually have my very own SLR camera! It was a Pentax K1000 – a really great camera back in the day, and they gave me a zoom lens, camera bag, and a lens cleaner
K1000
kit. How cool is that!? The K1000 was manufactured from 1976-1997, and though it was a completely manual camera, it maintained quite a following and was considered one of the top choices for photography students even as more automated cameras came on the market. It was a fabulous camera to start with, and learning to set everything manually, from exposure to focus, has made me a better photographer even through the switch to digital. I have no idea how many photos I took with that camera, but I can tell you I used it for many, many years and it has meant so much to me that I still have it, all wrapped up in it’s camera bag. I haven’t taken it out for many years, but somehow it comforts me to know it’s still around.
Now I don’t know if it’s possible for anyone to be born a photographer, but my early photos and portrait attempts certainly aren’t hanging on anyone’s walls today, even my own. Looking through them, though, I think you can see where I was trying to go, even if I wasn’t clear how to get there. My family loves to tease me every Christmas (because it’s one of the few times we are all together) about one infamous photo shoot I did with my step-sister and a friend down the street. We had just returned from either the State Fair or Carowinds or some other place where you find yourself going home with ridiculous souvenirs, and we were in the possession of this enormous blue paper flower. You know, the kind you made for your mom on Mother’s Day in 1st grade? Except this thing was like 4 feet in diameter with a 5 foot stem – no, I am not kidding. I decided it would be a great prop in a photograph, and proceeded to pose both girls in various positions and places around our house with this monstrous flower. Now, at the time I thought these shots were some of my best work and I was just delighted with the results. Little did I know those images would be brought to embarrass me again and again for the rest of my life – I truly don’t even know how all these people got a hold of copies. Film wasn’t cheap to a 13 year-old, so I can’t imagine that I was having 10 copies printed. Hmmm.
[...] Continued in Part 2 [...]