Day 2:  Meaning behind your blog name.

Today's blog is supposed to be about the name of my blog, but since it's pretty self explanitory, I'm going to write about how I got into photography. I'm sure many of you have heard this story before, but for those of you that haven't.. here it is! :D

All through high school, I was very involved in band. I mean, it was pretty much my life. I always wanted to major in music, but my junior year I decided to take an art class. I loooooovveeed it! The artistic gene just ran in my blood. So senior year rolled around, and I wanted to do band and art again. Unfortunately, the art class was at the same time as one of my core classes, so I couldn't take it. My counselor suggested I join yearbook and maybe mentor with someone in the art field. With this being Roswell, there wasn't much out there.... I was more intereseted in doing cinemotgraphy, so instead we found a photographer that said he would mentor me.

I went everyday on my 6th period and sat there watching him work in photoshop. Since it was 6th period, he never had any shoots, but still explained the settings and how you had to get the shot right in camera before taking it into photoshop to fix the skin and hue/saturation. I finally got to help him on two shoots. One was a senior where I learned how to hold a reflector and the other was a wedding, but I still wasn't really into the whole "photo" thing. He even told me once that he could tell I wasn't really into it and that I was just doing the mentorship for a grade. And it was true. It just didn't do anything for me in the beginning.

But let's go back to the yearbook topic. The whole time I was learning about photography, I was also learning about graphic design. We started with Adobe InDesign with a little bit of Photoshop on the side. The class had to go out and photograph the games and the different activities. We were all required to design at least one page in the yearbook. Since I was mentoring with a photographer, I was learning so much more then the people in the class. By the end of the year, I could do pretty much everything the editor's did.

Towards the end of the mentorship, I decided to purchase my first camera, a Nikon D40. I started shooting and after I realized I wasn't half bad, I was pretty much hooked. I shot objects around the house, my brother's soccer games, and soon, my friends. I would take them into photoshop and go crazy with editing. (I look back now and cringe!)

The summer after I graduated, I decided to take a film camera class at ENMUR with a scholarship I had earned. I had been learning digital and after I shot with a film camera a couple of times. I realized that it's a whole different experience. The mystery and surprise of seeing your image come to life in the dark room is something you just don't get with digital. I believe that if you want to be a photographer, you should be required to start on a film camera to have that sense of mystery. I spent so many hours in the dark room and I still, to this day, love film.

A few years went by and I continued to photograph my friends and the assignments for my art classes in college. By the time my brother was a senior in high school, I felt my work was good enough to start attaching an sitting fee to it. I did his senior photos along with a few of his friends. People started to see my work and wanted their families done. In 2009, I booked my first wedding. In the next few years, I did about 6-7 weddings but soon realized that weddings were not for me. I now specialize in portraits and families and absolutely love it! I soon upgraded my camera to a Nikon D90 and that camera has gotten me to where I am. Now I shoot on a Nikon D800 and wouldn't trade it for anything!! 

So that's pretty much a quick run down of how I got into photography and here's a few images from the past years. :D