I am excited to tell you my story, but the truth is that I just feel like the most fortunate person in the world to be able to pick up a camera and take images of the beauty around me. It’s been a scary and confusing journey and I wouldn’t change a thing.

Photographer was never the answer I gave when asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Despite living most of my adolescence with a camera in my hand and usually found behind it instead of in front. It never dawned on me that as early as a child, I was already a photographer. The way I took great pains to make sure my family was positioned just right within the camera frame, for holiday and birthday photos (composition). How I would take images of everything and anything I found interesting (abstract & macro photography). My mother’s reaction to the pictures after they came back from the developers was classic and upsetting but looking back now, it makes me chuckle. “What in the hell were you thinking taking pictures of knives, food, birds, flowers, doors?” ha-ha. Back then negative film and development of images were not exactly cheap, especially when you're a single mother raising 5 kids in a 2-bedroom apartment. Even as a young adult and even after being married and having a child and taking thousands of images of her, I still did not notice the pure joy I felt photographing.

 

It wasn’t until I was diagnosed with a brain tumor and lived through two brain surgeries that I realized it. Funny how being diagnosed with a life-threatening illness gives one a new perspective on life. It was time to do everything I thought I was never going to get a chance to do and that’s when I realized photography was my life, my joy, my passion. After working my life as a customer service rep and medical receptionist it was time to go back to school and major in, yup, you guessed it, Photography. Look mom, knives, birds, flowers, doors.

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Take it from me, when you find that thing that gets you up in the middle of the night because you just had to write it down in fear that you might forget it. Or you find something you love to do, and you spend all day doing it, and it's the end of the day and you are dead tired, but you continue doing it. That’s your life, your joy, your passion. That's what you are meant to be doing. Don’t wait, get out there and do it.