I fell in love with photography at the tender age of 5 when I received my first camera. It was a very simple point and shoot that took 110 film. The 110 film was easy for me as a child to load. I loved being behind the camera far more than in front of it.
At fifteen I was upgraded to a 35mm camera just before I was fortunate enough to take a trip to the UK. It was on that trip that I really began to understand the value of documentation through imagery and truly develop an eye for just the right shot. I returned home a changed person, wishing there was a way to travel the world taking pictures of it from my point of view.
It wasn’t until my existential twenty something life crisis of “What am I doing with my life?” that I revisited this dream. I had a job that I liked but I had reached the glass ceiling and I was not fulfilled. I planed yet another trip over seas, this time to Egypt. Armed with yet another point and shoot, but this time digital camera, I again wanted to somehow make a living taking pictures.
That is when I started seriously looking into going back to school. I was hoping to find a place where I could refine my skills and learn the business behind a career as a photographer. Thus I applied to Hallmark Institute of Photography. I received my acceptance letter a few weeks before my twenty-fifth birthday.
I seem to be on a ten year cycle when it comes to photography, I can’t wait to see where my life will be when I am thirty-five.