My Story

My first camera was a film camera, when I was probably around 8. I wish I could tell you I was cool and artsy from the start, but I don’t really remember much about taking photos back then, just that my camera was blue, and I loved the color blue. Like any good parents in the 90’s and early 2000’s my parents took photos and home videos of us faithfully.

Around 10 or so, I upgraded to a digital camera, and then used my mom’s digital camera, and then used my older sister’s DSLR, until I finally borrowed money from my boyfriend (my now husband) to purchase my first “real” camera (a Nikon DSLR).

I think what I loved most about photography back then was the ability to see things differently. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I didn’t see anything. But when I looked at myself in a photo, I saw a story. I saw the things that I didn’t feel like other people saw unless it was captured in a photo. The things that I would’ve just ran on past, if I wasn’t taking an image.

Going through all of those archives now, there’s a couple of things I’ve learned: video is important to me too, we’re bad at taking photos of the things that matter, good photography doesn’t matter that much when looking back, and preserving the photos and videos I’ve taken is way more important than I’ve realized.

Today, photos are all about sharing online. To the point that I create things specifically to show online and nowhere else. I post a photo and forget about it. It costs me nothing. This is an odd problem, because in many ways, being able to share online has made me who I am today. But I also don’t want to just take photos and be creative so that strangers on the internet might possibly think I’m cool for doing so.

Where am I going with this? Basically, I love photos. I love dressing up and imagining stories. I love preservation and holding onto the past. I love using my camera to connect with people in real life. If these are things that you also love, we’ll get along just fine.