Confused about this post? Start with the intro - HERE

I am grateful for photography.

It’s funny to think back 15 or so years and realize that not everyone was a photographer then. Cameras in phones were just becoming a thing, and we didn’t yet take pictures of every little thing. It was a time when photography had to be more intentional, aka you had to actually carry a camera around instead of it being integrated into something that was always with you.

I’ve always loved photography. My first camera was a blue and yellow fisher price rectangular camera on a string that had some funky specialized film that we sent away in the mail to be developed. If I remember correctly, I wore that thing into the ground. A lot of childhood pictures show me with it around my neck. I had some hand me downs after that and then the next one I really remember is my awesome film Olympus point and shoot with a zoom. I kept that through my college years even though I got a Nikon Film SLR sometime in high school. I got my first point and shoot digital camera in 2005 and my DSLR in 2009. Since then I’ve had a collection of point and shoot digitals, a mirrorless SLR and of course the one in my phones. Even before they were in our phones, I usually had a camera with me.

My first dark room experience was around age 12 during a crafty summer camp. It was one of the coolest things I had ever done up until that point. I loved it. I used to think about that dark room experience and wonder if I had dreamed it. That is until I found myself back in that same dark room in my late twenties cracking open a canister of black and white film I had shot. The dark room experience is literally the stuff my dreams are made of. It’s creative, it’s insular, it can be quiet or loud, you can do it with friends or alone, it takes focus, it has a specific process, you can augment the art, you can experiment, you can change perspectives. When you’re creating it has a deep presence and you have to be present, and best of all you are creating something with your own hands. I met great friends and teachers in this darkroom which led to unexpected experiences like entering and getting shown at juried art shows and sitting for photographs using wet plates (a process from the 1860s using glass plates. Look it up, it’s seriously so cool!)

I am grateful for photography because it has helped me see the world through different eyes and be able to switch perspectives. It’s also taught me how to edit and “play” with the different characteristics of a scene, which has translated into my daily life. It has shown me different lands and people across this planet that I would not have seen otherwise. Plus I just love the beauty of it. It captures these moments in time that never exist again in that exact way.

These quotes sum it up best for me -

“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”

— Dorothea Lange

“Life is like a camera. Just focus on what’s important and capture the good times, develop from the negatives and if things don’t work out, just take another shot.”

— Unknown

“Photography is a passport back to a moment that no longer exists.”

- Unknown