How do we all find out what our passions will be? Luck? Born into it? Inspiration? In my case: lack of choice.
Senior year in high school and I must come up with my schedule. I was only one English class away from freedom, alas, it was a full year course and that left me with 6 open slots. Gym; Check. Cooking; Check. Four left to go… ART! I hadn’t taken any art classes up until this point, and I needed something to fill my schedule. Photo 1, photo 2, ceramics and printmaking; check.
Fast forward a few weeks as we finally get settled into the classes and I get to go on my first shoot. Pentax K1000 in hand, I was ready. My first shot (coincidentally one of my favorites), a vintage-looking converse shoe. Tack sharp, perfectly exposed, nicely composed. I was hooked. The rest of the roll ended up being compositional crap, but this shot really kept me encouraged to keep shooting. After my first darkroom session; I was in love.
Over the course of the next few months, I spent hours upon hours learning everything that I could about photography. Tutorials, lens/body reviews, techniques, you name it, I studied it. Photography to me was an escape. The darkroom was my refuge from the struggles that a teenage high schooler would encounter.
So engulfed in passion for photography, I went out and bought a Nikon D3100 with a 18-55mm kit lens, along with a 55-200mm to pair it with. The perfect beginner lens combo. I spent the entire night trying everything under the sun, from botched attempts at light painting, to multiple exposures; reversing my lenses to get macro shots and nearly setting my back yard on fire with steel wool.
Once I had hit college, I had unfortunately had to put my photography passions aside to focus on schoolwork and trying to discover myself as a person. Fast forward to (what would be my senior year in college) now, and I’ve dropped out of school twice, my passion for photography, and self-employment has risen to an all-time high. I’ve worked with a couple of individuals, and couples to start off my career and build a small portfolio to start moving forward with my embark on self-employment.
My current plans and aspirations are to create and develop a fully functional, and relevant website. Start posting at least once a week and to create a consistent fan-base. By the end of 2019 I would like to have a 5000 user following on my Instagram and 5-10 thousand monthly views on my website. I would like to become fiscally independent from any work outside of my photography by 2022, and by 2025 I would like to have a fully functional, independent studio.
All in all, we all have our own ways of discovering our passions, mine just happened to be by lack of other options, and I could not have asked for a better introduction into the beautiful world of photography.