I didn’t always know how much I love photography. I was once in the dark, you could say… When I was a kid I played a little bit with cameras but didn’t really think much about it other than to look and click, but that all changed my senior year in high school.¬† It was the beginning of the year and I had signed up for physics as one of my classes. I realized shortly into my first period that I wasn’t going to make it long in that class… lets just say I had a premonition that physics wasn’t for me! I think I lasted through one whole class before I quickly went to drop the course.
The next day during my newly found free hour I was walking through the halls wondering what¬† I should do to fill the period. Take another class? Do nothing during this period? The latter was sounding tempting when I ran into my friend Makoto in the hallway. He was editor on the yearbook staff and he was trying to find more people to enroll because the yearbook staff was short some people. It sounded like it could be a fun experience, especially since all the class clowns were on the yearbook staff…Man I laughed when I got that yearbook! It is humorous what we got away with. It ended up that¬† they were low on photographers so I volunteered and borrowed an old beat up SLR from my friend since I didn’t have one of my own.
Let me say that I can’t tell you how happy I am that I ran into Makoto that day in the hallway. I fell in love with everything you could possibly do with a camera¬† and a little imagination. Through the year I was able to get my own camera¬† (thanks to my rock star brother at Christmas time) and I did everything I could to learn what I could. I graduated from highschool and immediately got a job at the local camera store. I figured the best way to learn was to immerse myself….
Eight years after that day in the hallways of Ballard High, I now have my degree in Commercial Photography and have been shooting professionally for the past 5 years. Its funny how little things shape the way that your life turns out. If I hadn’t been¬† in the hallway that day, I might have not realized the joy that photography brings me for many years. But luckily, I was able to pick up that camera, and start to hone my skills. That was the day that I started looking at life in pictures, and I am so fortunate to be able to capture all the moments I see for the people who hire me. Its amazing, being that, since I am with people during such emotional times in their lives… graduations, engagements, weddings, pregnancies, new babies and growing families… that my family of friends grows every time I answer my business phone. You can’t share such emotional moments in people’s lives without becoming friends with them!
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