photography

something near and dear to my heart.  i love taking photos. i love being in photos. i love looking at photos.  well. most photos.  i've been into photography since before i remember. back in 7th grade i had a camera, and i brought it to school. i have lots of random photos of my friends and life starting way back then. everyone asked me "christy why do you take so many pictures"  and i told them i just loved it.  now they look at my photo albums and say 'man i wish i would have taken photos back then too, you are lucky to have these memories'
i took every photography class available through high school and even did a self study for a semester with our photography teacher.  i loved it and everything about photography.  i remember our teacher using my photos as examples of great photography. i've got this one shot of my sister and our dog snowball and another one of the nativity scene in our basement, both of which i used back lighting... i remember my teacher telling the class "you can't teach this kind of photography"

The dark room was my favorite place to be.. i enjoyed so much working in there, manipulating the image into exactly what i wanted it to be.
i even had a part time job at moto photo, a small one hour photo store where i got to do what i loved doing...developing peoples pictures, and helping them capture their own memories into beautiful photographs (even if i did have to manipulate them to get them to look good:)
fast forward to my sophomore year of college(1998).  i'm in school for graphic design.  our assignment is to take a photo of these cute little harley davidson shoes for babies with this brand new digital camera. i took a couple pictures with this digital camera... i HATED it. this thing was huge, you had to hold it with both hands.  it had a small 1x1 inch screen to see what it was you were taking a photo of, and i think it was maybe 1.1 mega pixels. this had to have been one of the first digital cameras to roll out to the public.  it was ugly, and it produced ugly things.  i swore to my classmates, i will never, ever buy a digital camera.  i said film is the way to go, you can blow your photo up to any size you want with out losing quality (with a 100 speed film or less obviously). 
fast forward another few years to 2003.  i was still sporting my Olympus film camera. i loved that camera. i also had dads SLR... which i was totally in love with.  for christmas my boyfriend at the time decided it was time i join the digital age, and bought me a gateway camera.  we played around with it for maybe 15 minutes when the batteries died on us.  we put in new batteries, and again they died right away. i said to him, this is why i don't want to go digital.  we went to the gateway store the next day to replace this camera...we ended up getting a canon powershot... a camera which wormed its way into my heart after a few weeks of use. it took forever to make the battery run out... i took a bunch of photos around the house, and went to get them developed. i was so nervous that they'd look as horrid as the photos of those harley davidson shoes for kids...but they weren't half bad! 
in early 2003 we learned the fate of the state farm regional office, and it wasn't good. they were closing down to move operations to lincoln ne. i decided it was time to get back into doing something i loved, something i'm passionate about.  photography. brown college was offering a digital photography bachelors degree... i thought, this is it. this is what i will do after  the office closes.  i signed up and was well on my way to $75,000 of debt to get this degree.  first quarter was straight up generals.  they didn't offer photography classes at night until my second quarter.  i lasted just the first two quarters in class.  since i've been taking photos my whole life, and with an SLR for at least 10 years, i was very in touch with how a camera works...
first day of class we each got a film SLR, and i shit you not, we learned how to load film. we learned how to change the aperture and speed of the shutter. i thought to myself 'what am i doing here?'  these people just like taking pictures, so they signed up to take this route in photography.
It drove me crazy sitting there listening to people not know how to do these things. how do you think you are going to just pick up a career like this through a 4 year degree when you've never picked up a SLR camera before?!?  I knew one thing, I wouldn't walk out with a degree in photography with a $75,000 bill and be able to make the monthly school loan payments... no photographer could!  if you want to be a photographer, it's about knowing people and building up a clientele.... you aren't going to make that kind of money right away to start paying of those student loans! 
After one quarter, i was done.  the two instructors i had (i use that term very loosely) were horse shit. the woman gave all the boys A's and all the girls B's. she flirted with the boys, she made sure to have any group projects boys vs girls so she could grade more easily! it was the most irritating thing in the world. after getting B's on all of my projects, i somehow ended up with a final grade of A after not getting any A's thru the class... how does that work?!  she drove me up a wall.  neither instructor knew how to be a teacher, it was both instructors first time teaching.  and i'm supposed to go $75,000 in debt for that?!
okay, so i've gone way off topic here.  we ended up with Canon Rebels as our digital camera for class.  i fell in love with it, this is how photography should be.  i used that camera everywhere i went.  and quite honestly i used every last shot of it before i blew the shutter on it. 
now i've got another canon rebel that replaced my first one. again, totally in love with this camera.  it takes amazing photos. 
i've noticed while looking around at peoples photos on facebook that everyone thinks they can be a photographer.  i've seen random people who tag my friends in photos on their online 'photography class' album....as i said i love looking at photos, but not all photos... some are just a picture. and i see a lot of these on people's online photo albums. it's sad to me that photography isn't an art anymore... and i'm not claiming all the photos i take are any more than a picture either... but if you are going to have an online 'photography class album' you should choose your photos wisely!  put up photos with dimension. put photos up with a clear subject.  photos with interest. don't stand over a garden and take a photo...get in and take a photo of that one, perfect flower.  don't take a photo of your kids from your height, get down to their eye level, this makes for a waaaay more interesting photo of your kids (you can take photos from different vantage points that are good, but again, it's an art, not just a photo).
anyone can pick up a camera, but it takes a special eye to be a photographer... and i'm sad that everyone who can point and click their little $100 camera thinks they are a photographer. it fills me with joy to find great photographers... the ones who take the kind of photography that 'you can't teach'.