I have been thinking about what makes me “me” and this only led to me thinking about the experiences and events that made me “me”. So here is my story. . . the story of how I got here. I have always been artistic. My aunt gave me my first art class when I was seven, teaching me how to draw a pine-apple. I kept drawing all the way through high school. I was naturally talented at seeing what I saw and then translating to paper. I liked drawing kids with graphite. I always wanted to do photography and painting but it just never happened. The doors always shut.
Right after I graduated, I was digging in our hall way closet (I think I was looking for goggles. We were going on vacation to Glenwood Springs, where we always spent lots of time swimming). I found my mom’s Olympus OM-1. It was her graduation gift when she graduated high school. I was intrigued. I had my mom show me the basics and our entire vacation I was behind that lens. I even figured out how to get on top of a building so that I could take pictures of the sunsetting. The film got jammed when I was rewinding it I was only able to shoot one roll. When I moved to Colorado Springs, we finally found a shop that could fix it, remove the shot film, and develop it. It was then that I realized I had found something very special in my life. It was magic! The pictures were beautiful and I stapled them to my dorm room walls for inspiration.
Some pictures of pictures
I kept shooting through my first semester of college. . . taking pictures of the crazy rain storms we had that year and the new friends I made. In my second semester, the doors finally opened for me to take a photo class. This is where I met Mrs. Carol Dass, a wonderful local photographer and now a great friend. She encouraged me to shoot my life and to document the things around me and she taught me the magic of the darkroom. I was hooked! The smell of fixer, the magic of seeing an image appear, and perfecting the patient process of translating light. For my final project, I documented my journey to Israel. I packed my trust OM-1 and a bunch of film. . . I didn’t even bring a digital camera 🙂 It was here that I shot my first real engagement. My friends Candace and Stefan got engaged while we were on a boat in the middle of the sea of Galilee. I printed them one of the black and white photos that I had shot. They loved it!
Garden of Gethsemane
Our team at Aroma Coffee shop in Tel Aviv. . one of our favorite places
Over the summer, I was a leader in a high school camp called DSI and they asked me if I would take pictures of the students working at the Desperation Conference. I only had my film camera but one of my good friends Karena Stewart (now Demerchant) had just gotten a Canon Rebel XTI. It was my first experience with a semi-pro DSLR camera. I took a million pictures and learned a lot through trial and error, not really even knowing what I was doing. It was while taking pictures of some of the interns that I caught the eye of a friend from high school who was venturing into professional photography herself. Enter Hannah Brooks. She asked me if I wanted to join her for one of her weddings that she was shooting. I was awed and, of course, I ecstatically said yes.
Christy Nockles from Watermark singing during the Vow
worship
Joel Houston from Hillsong
Jumping around during the finale
Hannah let me borrow her old Nikon and she walked me through all the basics of digital shooting and gave me the run around on how to shoot a wedding and do it well. It was a whirl wind. I remember leaving with numb feet and my back aching but loving every second of it. Hannah asked me to help out her photographer for her wedding about a month later and I, once again, was thrilled. About the same time, Candace and Stefan asked if I would be there to help shoot their wedding too.
I borrowed a Canon 20D from one of my high school students that was in a small group that I led and began shooting as much as I could, when ever I could. I loved the feeling of the camera in my hands. . its weight, its solidness. I loved the sound of the shutter closing and opening again. I loved life behind the lens. I got the elements version of photoshop for Christmas and poked and prodded at editing. A great blizzard began to come in the morning of Hannah’s wedding and I ended up shooting Candace and Stefan’s wedding just at the end of the storm. I had to be rescued from my neighborhood so that I could get to them.
Still one of my favorites. . .Hannah in the snow
Candace and Stefan after the ceremony
Candace and her dress
In the Spring, I bought my own Canon 30D which I took with me on my next adventure to China. It was in China that the world of video began to take hold of me. The missionary there had written a script of a short film based on the story of the prodigal son. He needed someone who knew how to work a camera to help him out. It just so happened that I declared a Recording Arts major the semester before and had begun learning the wonderful world of video. On my second trip to China, I brought my trusty OM-1 with the intent of truly capturing the heart of my experience without the hesitation or insecurity of having a camera I didn’t fully know. I feel like I was successful. While I was there, I took some family photos of the missionaries and their kids because they hadn’t had any normal family photos in a long time (Chinese photographers have a very different style then they were used too).
At lunch, a tibetan man sitting in the restaurant
In Hong Kong by the museum
What a cutie!
Taken with my OM-1
Our tent
Our nomad friends
The bakery
down by the river. .
My roommate with a butterfly
some family portraits: little miss blue eyes
the jokester
one of my favorites
the family
After my trip, I focused a lot of my energy on video but always coming back to photography for when I wanted to feel like me. I did occasional portrait shoots. . one being my best friends engagements. . but nothing huge. I shot a lot of color film that year, documenting my life and adventures and moments of quiet and solitude. I studied up on digital. . learning more and more about my equipment, my lenses, my flash. I shot a wedding on my own and shot along side Hannah on another. However, I entered into my senior year completely bedazzled by film but making my rent by editing video.
A chair
my apartment
Lake pueblo
A candid shot at the wedding I shot with Hannah
My senior year in college was marked by time spent in the darkroom. I shot 35mm and 120mm film. I fell in love with Holga and all the fun cameras that I found like my action sampler and my split cam (film blog here). My work caught the eye of Heather Oelklaus, gallery manager at HeeBee JeeBees, and I landed my first 15 piece solo gallery show (blog post here). All the images were Holga and were inspired by my memories as a child and my longing to return to those care free days. It was also at this time that I decided that I would document my life with my 30D, no matter how horrible the pictures turned out or how uneventful my life may be, I was going to take pictures of it and write a blog about them (you can find the start of the blogs here). My cameras became my best friends. I carried them with me everywhere I went and I was constantly behind them.
one of my favorite Holgas
adam’s mountain cafe
the inside of a broken down train
my trusty holga
the invite to my show
me at my show
It was while setting up my gallery show that I met my fiance. (well I re-met my fiance . . . we had met 8 months prior. . i just didn’t remember) It was at this point in time that I became confident in the photographer that my experiences had made me become. I think some how people noticed that confidence and I had the honor of shooting many wonderful people.
Now a few new cameras and lenses and experiences later, I am living my passion. For so long my heart had been divided, busy with work but longing to be behind the lens. But now I have the wonderful opportunity to pour all of myself into the thing that makes me most happy. I love photography! Every dream I ever dreamt with God had to do with capturing moments of life, suspending them in light and sharing them with the world. I am blessed beyond measure and every time I pick up my camera I think of how blessed I am and how much joy I get out of my job. It is amazing the paths that we take to become who we are and how these paths make us “us”.
like a breath of fresh air.
