what made me start doing photography...

I started actually doing photography when I was a freshman in high school, though middle school is where it sparked for me. When I was in 8th grade, I was in yearbook but I was also on the football team. I would say that 50 percent of my year was spent in football practice and at my football games. Now everybody thinks that me being my size, I want to be on the football field for my whole life and that just isn't true. I have passions just like everyone else and photography was slowly becoming one of those things. After football season ended, I had so much more free time on my hands. I had just started going to Long Hollow Baptist church and before I knew it I was serving on the creative team, doing things that I had already known how to do but never had the chance to do it; this is what I would consider my temporary creative outlet. I knew I wasn't going to be doing this forever, but for an almost freshman in high school, I thought I was doing a good job of keeping myself busy.

Freshman year comes around and I'm surrounded by a lot more creatives, if you will (people who are into different forms of art.) So I'm beginning to get even more interested in photography and with this urge for me to get started, I was only really missing one major thing to start; a camera. I ended up getting a camera and I was just doing pictures for fun. I didn't have the newest and best camera out. Did I need the newest one? No. Could anyone tell what gear I was using? No. It didn't matter what I was using as long as I was comfortable with that gear, that's all that matters. We began going around and taking pictures of random things: abandoned houses, old vehicles, plants' etc.. I felt like I was doing a pretty good job for someone who had just gotten into photography.

Sophomore year passed and I was still doing the exact same thing I was doing before. I felt like I was slowly getting a niche for taking pictures of people. I have no idea why I started liking to do it but I just knew I was good at it. My junior year I joined yearbook staff just because I knew what was expected of me because of my experience in middle school. Who doesn't want the opportunity to do what they love doing in class, at school? Exactly. I joined and I was the only person with prior experience in photography. I got asked lots of questions while I was in there just because I knew how to work a camera and get the exact photo I'm looking to capture. We are going throughout the school year doing our assigned pages and getting pictures of everything we needed to have an exquisite looking yearbook.

then came the day...

I got asked to do someone's senior photos for the first time. WHAT?! I freaked out because someone was actually willing to pay me for something I had never gotten paid to do before. It was wild. I was filled with so many emotions I didn't know what to do. Needless to say, I did those pictures and I guess I killed them because here I am. After that day, I began getting back to back messages for sessions and I didn't know how to handle them. What do I say? What do I do? I do what I do best, capture those moments. Seniors are where I started; my photography has slowly made a move to weddings as my focus.