How I picked Up a Camera (and have yet to put it back down)

I grew up with an amazing photographer, my dad. Spending countless hours in front of his camera and beside him in his darkroom was my bliss. I was completely smitten. For my 12th birthday my parents gave me my first camera; a 35mm Kodak something-or-other.

Within a year, my family would move, my dad would give up his darkroom, and my life would plummet into the chaos of adolescence, magnified by the drama of my parents’ failing marriage. I never saw my first camera again. Somehow it vanished. And with it, my passion for photography.

But you see, I’m an artist. And ultimately that means I’m a storyteller. So while I never stopped tellIng my tales, I spent years focusing on words and music as my primary tools.

Fast forward to about six years ago: I’d seemingly settled in to a mind numbing, soul crushing corporate life. And while I’d somehow managed to carve out a niche for myself which allowed for me to tell stories, something was fundamentally missing. I was telling other people’s stories...or at least twisting my own to serve their agendas. I got lost.

Then, within a two week period, my mother died and my company closed. Nothing catapults you into serious self reflection quite like a major life crisis and I was simultaneously thrust into the center of two! I had no idea anymore who I was or what I wanted to do...I only knew that I had to find a different path. And that path had to be true. I had to tell my stories.

There I was, without a job, without direction, and I couldn’t find my voice. Until one day, someone almost took it all away. On June 7, 2013, I found myself in my worst nightmare: a school shooting.

Life throws us some beautiful lessons wrapped up in some really crazy ways. Surviving the shooting, the loss of an eight year career, the death of my mother, and the culmination of all the tragedies and wounds and setbacks of a lifetime pierced deep into my shroud of self defense and preservation and all the stories trapped within me suddenly demanded to be told. But they wanted a new vehicle.

And so on the first day of August in the year 2013, I picked up a camera. And I haven’t put it down since...

I am a born storyteller. It is the one thing I do best. And it’s where I feel the most comfortable in my own skin. It’s what ties me to everything.

For me, nothing is real until I can create a story around it and send my vision out into the world.

It can be lonely and isolating. And I often feel as if I’m out of sync - in my own dimension - while I am creating.

I can spend days and weeks with no real direction, feeling exposed and raw and completely insecure.

While many of my story attempts wind up never hitting their mark, occasionally I’m right on target and DAMN! it feels good!

That’s when everything becomes glorious.

And that’s when I remember the depth of my purpose and my true love.