In this day and age, everyone loves to take pictures, but I wasn’t one of them. Growing up I was never really fond of photography and taking pictures. My parents would always ask me to take their picture whenever we would go out to some place with a nice view. I always took their picture with their phones, although I didn’t want to.
I started getting into photography when my brother was enrolled in the yearbook his junior year of high school. I would always ask to borrow his camera, but he would never let me use it because he did not trust me because I was only 8 years old and he thought that I would break his camera.
One day when my family was out in Monterey because my brother was taking pictures of my family I complained to my parents about how I wanted to use his camera and he wasn’t letting me. My parents then ended up talking to my brother and they told him to let me borrow the camera for 30 minutes to take some pictures of them.
Those 30 minutes really got me into photography because I was able to take pictures of everything that I saw, although the pictures that I took were really bad and blurry. I still really enjoyed the time that I had with my brother’s camera because it showed me how taking pictures can be fun and very challenging.
Since that day I was really into taking pictures, although I wasn’t able to take pictures with my brother’s camera I was still able to make it work using my iphone. I was able to take pictures of my dad’s Corvette, my family, and the sky.
Eventually, when I was 12 years old, I got my brother’s Nikon camera as a hand me down and I started appreciating photography because I finally had my own camera and I was finally able to take pictures of my own and I actually started to enjoy photography for what it was.
I enjoy photography because I can capture people’s special moments. I’m able to share these moments with the person and they can go on and share it with their family because digital pictures never disappear unless they are deleted. This alone makes me enjoy photography because although I might not know the people that I am taking pictures of, they will always appreciate the pictures that are taken of them.
Being in the Yearbook class has provided more opportunities because I was able to do the F/JV football spread. Not only have I enjoyed taking pictures for the football team, I also made some new friends that play football. The yearbook allowed me to express my passion much more because I get to do what I love and I also get to have some of my pictures go in the yearbook.
In the future I see myself doing photography as a side hustle or a hobby. I recently got booked to take pictures for a soccer game. I found passion in photography because I’m able to get paid for work that I enjoy doing.
I was able to make 200 dollars just taking pictures of people playing soccer. I would like to expand the type of sports that I shoot, I would like to take pictures of soccer, wrestling, and maybe even flag football. These sports stand out to me because I have competed in wrestling and soccer and I believe that it would be fun and challenging shooting for a sport that I have done trying to capture each moment at the exact moment.
I recently bought a new Sony A7R iii and I was able to test it out that same week when I was paid to take pictures for some parents who wanted pictures of their kids playing soccer.
Even though a majority of my pictures come out good, I still have times where I fail in capturing the moment or sometimes where I fail in having my camera in the right settings. I still have a lot to learn and I plan on pivoting and watching more YouTube videos to understand more about my camera and what all of the settings mean. I also plan on learning more about all of the different modes that my camera has such as Aperture Priority, and Shutter priority. Since I just recently got my camera I plan on reading the manuals to get a deeper understanding on how all of the settings work.
I plan on continuing doing photography in the future. My dream is to be able to do sports photography for college football teams like USC and Michigan State. This might be challenging to achieve, but I have some connections with people who are sports photographers themselves, so it looks promising. I also plan on taking a photography course in college to build my portfolio and look more professional.
Although I would like to do photography as a career, it’s difficult to get into professionally. Unless an opportunity arises, I mostly see myself doing photography as a side hustle because I would be able to do something I enjoy while still having time to have a main job. In the meantime, I’m going to take every opportunity to continue honing my skills.