growth.

Although I have always loved taking pictures, my career in photography started by accident. I never really had a "good" camera and never had more of an interest in photography outside of capturing the odd memory of certain occasions.


My camera collection started with a small 110mm camera that came in a cereal box and my first 35mm was found in the glove compartment of a car we rented after I hit a deer in the middle-of-nowhere-Colorado. It wasn't until college that I used an SLR for the first time. The class was photography 101, chosen merely to fill an art credit I needed because I couldn't paint, sculpt or draw. The class was intended to round out my degree; little did I know it would change my life.

My first day in class, I vaguely knew what shutter speed meant, and I'd only heard the term, "f-stop" from conversations with others I knew that had taken a photography class. I don't know if it was the amazing instructor I had or something about tapping into an as-yet-undiscovered passion, but that class changed me.

I spent the better part of a year isolated in the darkroom at school, and by the end of the summer of 2004, I was asked to photograph my first wedding. I actually considered declining the offer. To that point, the only people I had ever photographed were the ones required of portraiture assignments, which I hated with every fiber of my being. Despite my nervousness, I shot the wedding anyway, and had a blast. Suddenly, I wanted to shoot fewer flowers and dilapidated buildings and more people.

I consumed the idea of shooting portraits and found some workshops to take and learned more about the art of portraiture. The more I shot, the more I realized how dynamic and amazing the human form is. As I look back on my portfolio from those first awkward portrait assignments to the work I have shot this summer, I love seeing how much I've grown as a photographer, and find it funny that I find so much joy in the very situation that used to make me wish I had enrolled in ceramics instead.

Even though I surely have some favorite landscapes and still life images in my portfolio, I certainly enjoy taking pictures of people more than I did when I first started shooting six years ago.