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| I lived in my high school's dark room my senior year. |
When I was in tenth grade, I picked up a camera for the first time. Nearly five years later and I haven't put down a camera since. I have gone through three cameras and two free trials of PhotoShop just trying to master the art of photography.
I remember sitting in the office of my high school guidance counselor in the middle of my freshman year of high school making my schedule for the upcoming year. His office always smelled disgusting like sweat and football equipment since he is the varsity football coach so I was in a hurry to get out of there. He gave me a packet of all the classes being offered and I asked about a few different classes but nothing really interested me. I ultimately decided on a digital photography class just for the heck of it.
Senior year of high school I took the same photography class twice. That was black and white photography and I loved it even more than digital photography. It was the class that was really set a part from all the other photography classes because I got to do everything myself and I loved that about the class. The dark room became my second bedroom, even keeping a handful of CDs in a drawer to blast on an ancient stereo when I was alone (I usually blasted whatever I wanted when people were in there with me though). There is so much more emotion and depth to a black and white photograph and that's what I loved. But the best part is getting to make the photograph yourself.
I photograph everyone and everything. I volunteer to photograph events at school and once a fellow student called me "the camera girl" after seeing me everywhere and wondered if anyone else owned a camera on our campus. I will likely bring my camera to every family birthday party and annoy all my cute, little cousins. I photograph nearly every holiday and beg my friends and sister to model their new clothes to take pictures.
I don't know why I took such a liking to photography. I had been in art classes before and I liked the classes but there was a reason this one stuck. There is truly an art to capturing a raw emotion of a person when they least expect it and I hope I can do just that. I still shoot color film but unfortunately I can't develop the film and create the photographs myself. I haven't been in a dark room since I graduated and, really, I'm not sure how I've survived this long.
Photography is my first love. I have collected countless vintage cameras that I'll never be able to use because the film is too expensive. Sounds like love to me. Photography has led me to a lot of different places (such as wandering off to physical places) and is still a big part of my life. I wish I could just walk around a new city for a day and photograph everything I haven't seen before. I just know that I won't be putting my cameras down for a while.