In eighth grade I took a career aptitude test.  The first time I took it without much regard to the questions or answers in an effort to finish early and move on to other, more important matters. I sat impatiently at the module desk in Mr. Thompson’s classroom as the results came up: taxi driver.

There was no way I was going to turn in my weekly stuff for this module and have it say that I was best suited to be a taxi driver. To this day I don’t even like beaded car seats, and I certainly can’t tolerate some of the things I see other drivers do. Honestly, is it that hard to use the turn signal?  They put it next to the steering wheel for a reason — convenience and ease of use — not because it’s the only place left after building the rest of the vehicle.

So I took the test again.  This time I paid attention to the questions and answers.  It didn’t ask anything too leading, if I remember correctly.  Most of the questions dealt with interests, habits, personality, etc. After answering the computer did its thing, and ding, up pops the answer: photographer.

Photographer. What an interesting answer for me. I hadn’t thought about it before and didn’t remember too much of the aptitude test until just a couple months ago when I started to really get into my photography website and do some thinking about where I wanted to take it, and myself.

The more I look back, the more I remember how much I loved it when I got to play with the camera at my mom’s office after school; or, even better, when my mom would bring home a camera from the office for the weekend when she was asked to take pictures of this or that for the newspaper. There was one year at the county fair when I begged and begged to go shoot pictures. Imagine my delight when I was given the camera and my very own roll of film for the morning.

Maybe it was my fascination with the darkroom at the newspaper office, and how cool it was to go into this room with my uncle that only had one red light and see the pictures develop on the paper with what I thought was some kind of really crazy water. I remember looking up at the photos hanging across the room from the string and looking at negatives with the cool little eyeglass.

I bought my first camera just before I went to France for a semester abroad in college and I haven’t looked back since. I have put a lot of thought into the notion of “Find your passion and the money will follow.” For me, my passion is photography and my website will be my means to the latter. I won’t be found if I don’t have anything out there that people can find. 

For the time being I’m going to work on my website to bring you and others into my experience. I will be able to see what photos I’ve shot that people gravitate to and are passionate enough about to want them in their homes or offices. I’m going to push forward, shoot more people in our community and hopefully learn a great deal in the process.

With every photograph I take I learn more about photography and myself. I’m happy to have you along for the ride … but only if I don’t have to use a beaded car seat.