Here and there: How I got to where I am - Part 1

Part 1

I doubt that any one of my friends would be unaware of the fact that I am a photographer. At the very least, they would be aware that I have an extreme interest in the hobby and have gotten paid for a few gigs. But what a lot of people don't know is how exactly I found photography.

It goes without saying that I'm a very creative person. I first started creating images in middle school. Some would say that I was a troubled child. I had a friend who was an artist and I really liked his drawings and paintings. So, wanting to be just like him I picked up a drawing pencil and started to draw. I found that drawing was a good outlet for thoughts that I could not express into words. I started by copying existing pictures free hand and went on to create my own personal works.

My ability to draw helped fuel my already out of control creativeness. On top of the drawing, I was also writing stories and doing role playing, such as D&D, Vampire, Wraith and various card games like Magic: The Gathering. Anything that would fuel my imagination.

But one aspect of my creativity would not survive.

My freshman high school art teacher was Mrs. Abbny. She was a fan of my art and always tried to push my artistic ability to the next level. Not only was I doing projects for class, but I was also trying to show her that I can go to that next level with my personal stuff.

For this art class, we could choose to do what ever we wanted for our final project. At the time, I was a huge SPAWN fan. I decided to make a poster of Spawn. I pored all of my creative fuel into the fire for two weeks. The black Sharpie marker had to be a specific shade of black with a certain type of tip. The pencil had to be 0.5mm lead with a certain type of pencil body. You name it, it had to be perfect.

I got an A on the final project, needless to say. Mrs. Abbny wanted me to enroll in her drawing class. How could I say no?

I should have said no.

All of my talent was gone. I had no inspirations, no abilities of traditional art left within me. The fuel for the fire was all used up. She was devastated by the lack of technical ability of the assignments I turned in. Thankfully, she game me a C-. I deserved an F.

But hope remained.

My high school offered the opportunity to let students go to Vocational School for their Junior and Senior years. In 10th grade, I took a field trio to our Vocational School to see what they offered. I looked at 2 classes; Commercial Art and Commercial Photography.

Commercial art brought back slight feelings of failure. The look of disappointment on my former art teachers face, the frustration of sitting outside at school on a small hill overlooking the schools pond, sketch pad on lap and pencil in hand. Looking at the drawing and not having it look anything like what I saw.

I spoke with the Commercial art instructor about my artistic history. It seemed as though she understood all to well what I went through. She told me that Commercial Photography might be what I need.

My group walked across the JVS campus. Some of the other kids leaving the group to go to programs that were along the way. I rounded a corner and caught the faint smell of something I never smelled before. The odder was coming from the Commercial photography lab.

The remainder of my group walked into the lab. Cubbyholes for each student was to our left. A bulletin board to the right. After the cubbyholes was a large open space with flash units set up, a seamless gray background pulled down, and a stool in front of that with a Nikon FM10 camera on a heavy duty tripod. At the time, I had no clue what any of those things were. But I was curious.

One of the photography students was our tour guide. She was a Junior by the name of Bridgette. She showed us the studio space, the color processing lab, the black and white film processing lab, and finally the dark room.

While we were all in the dark room, Bridgette was explaining the process involved with black and white print developing. I still remember how it felt when I saw the image rise up from the white nothingness of the paper. It was so breathtaking! While the paper was processing, she asked my group, "So, how many of you here are here to just get out of class?" Almost everyone in the group raised their hand. Then she asked, "How many of you are here because you are truly interested in photography?" I quickly raised my hand without hesitation, eyes still fixed to the paper in the odd smelling liquid that would later be known as Polymax T Develiper.

After the demo in the dark room, I lagged behind the group to ask all sorts of questions, all of which I can't recall. After school, I told my mother about my day. About how the Commercial art instructor understood my problem and how it made me feel remembering advanced drawing class. But, as I started to talk about the photography lab, my face lit up. My mother and father said I could go to Vocational school to learn how to be a commercial photographer!

To be continued...