Photography

The thing in my life that is most consuming to me right now is photography. Over this past year my passion for photography has grown so much. It used to be just taking some pictures of me and friends, then it grew to an occasional sunset and then it started turning in to more than just a hobby.

Photography is my passion now. I love being able to capture moments. I love seeing something unique and being able to capture it and share it with others. I love the feeling when I’m standing with my camera and ideas just fill my mind and things change around me and I see things in a different way. Being so interested in photography somehow puts a positive spin on life for me. When everything is so bad in life and all you see on the news is bad, it feels nice to stand in silence and see something beautiful; to look deeply in to the things around us that we usually take for granted.

When my friend Laurel and I were taking some funny pictures of us one day I stopped and was looking around for ideas. I didn’t really notice until Laurel started laughing and said something like oh no the photographer in you is coming out. Then I realized that I do that a lot. I had stopped and was just scanning the area around us and picturing the way I could put things together. What was really cool to me was that I had zoned everything else out. I could tune things out and tune into the world around me to see what backgrounds I could put together with what pose.

Photography is my world that makes sense. It’s like an escape. It’s a world with imagination and ideas. When I’m taking pictures it’s just up to me. I can use the things around me to make something beautiful or make something unique that other people usually wouldn’t think of to photograph; which is what I love the most.  Photography is completely unique. You can give any two people a camera and the same surroundings but they will leave with totally different pictures and ideas. One might just take a picture that anyone can take of a sunset, while the other will find something unique, something beautiful.

Another thing I love about photography is the thought that goes into it. There’s a quote “Owning a cannon camera does not make you a photographer.” I like this because it means even though anyone in the world can go by a camera it doesn’t automatically make them a photographer. Just like anyone can go buy a basketball but that doesn’t make them a basketball star. Anyone can pick up a camera and take a picture of a sunset, but it’s the thought that you put into it that makes it a unique photograph that people want to look at. Some people may not notice or they may not even care, but I see the difference in photographs that are taken using thought and feelings and a picture that was just taken because they saw something pretty. I notice it in the pictures that I’ve taken. I look at ones I took when I started to like photography to the pictures I take now and there is a huge difference, I can feel what’s going on in the picture. My sister told me once that she liked a picture that I took so much because it was different. It wasn’t just another picture. She could feel the thought that I had put into it and then it triggered different thoughts for her while she was looking at it.