Hello! Welcome to my photography page. Thanks for stopping by.
For as long as I can remember, I only ever wanted to be two things: a writer and a photographer (in either order). Even now, when people ask me, “What do you do?” it feels pretty random to list one before the other. To me, they are one and the same—a medium for expression and creativity, exploration and reflection.
I got my first camera when I was 9 years old, the infamous Kodak 110, which had only made its debut one year prior. It was sleek, it was clean. It was “pocket-sized” and it was seriously the coolest thing ever made.
As comical as it seems now, the small plastic cartridge contained a mere 24 exposures of 16 mm film. Occasionally, if you were lucky, you might get 25. Once, I’ll always remember, I somehow got 27. Even the guy at the lab excitedly told me he’d never seen that before.
Anyway, I’d been dreaming about my new camera for months, so on the day I finally got it, I shot an entire roll within an hour of taking it out of the box.
As soon as I’d popped in the cartridge, I ran to the nearby woods and started snapping pictures of trees, framing most of my shots at what I imagined were incredibly artistic Dutch angles, thinking no one else had dreamt such a thing was even possible.
It was revolutionary. I was making history.
My mind raced, my heart pounded. It was a rush like nothing I’d ever felt before. I turned and moved and spun, framing one shot after the next. Colors, images, shapes, the contrast of light and shadow, dancing in my brain.
Then suddenly, it was all over. I’d shot the final picture and that was that.
I was despondent, wandering through the woods for the next two hours, noticing all the things I should have photographed. Seeing things, I swear, I’d never noticed before. A spray of purple violets arced at the base of a tree. Mushrooms on a dead stump. A dried milkweed pod rattling in the breeze. An empty robin’s egg resting gently on a patch of bright green moss.
I didn’t need to get my photos back from the lab to understand my mistake. In my exuberance I’d shot 24 photos without really seeing anything in the frame.
Thank goodness for digital photography!
Decades later, that exuberance, that rush, that excitement of taking pictures still feels as fresh and vital as it did that first day. In the many years since, however, I think I’ve also learned how to see.
Honestly, I can’t imagine life without my camera. With it I’ve gone places I never dreamt of going and met incredible people I never would’ve known. It’s not only opened doors, it’s given me a window on worlds beyond my own. So, if you like what you see and think I could do something for you, please get in touch. Heck, I’ve even got one last unexposed cartridge of Kodak 110 film. I will need to use it sparingly, of course, but I’m sure we can work something out.
John