How it all started: Part I

If there was one thing our lives are filled in, it’s gotta be forgetfulness. Even though I started my photography journey not that long ago, I often forget the difficulties I faced, the things I learned along the way, and the seamless thread of events that has brought me to where I am today. On that note, I want to do a series of posts on how it all started. Me blogging. Me writing stories. Taking pictures. If someone would have told me a few years ago that I would be a wedding photographer, I would have never believed them. I didn’t even own a camera. I thought wedding photographers were all male. I spent most of my time in the library, and I went to college which had zero art classes. My friends from college could all see me getting a PhD, but a wedding photographer was nowhere on the horizon. Are you ready for a journey? Welcome to post number 1!

Did you ever dream of something impossible and it happened? My dreams were always quite realistic. As a kid I dreamed about eating bananas, my family was poor and bananas were a treat only once a month. As a teen-owning a pair of rollerblades. In college-about studying abroad. After college-about paying off my loans. I didn’t know how it was to dream big; I didn’t have many expectations for myself, neither did I know how to break a mold and be something you want to be. But when I met photography, I suddenly wanted to chase a dream that looked impossible. Although I always loved drawing and admired artists, I poured myself into studying, into books about foreign languages and nations, past civilizations and more languages. Even the college of my choice offered zero classes in art, but what it did have was a study abroad program in the Middle East. I enrolled for the first semester of my sophomore year and bought a ticket to Israel. The only thing I bought for this trip was a camera and I absolutely loved it.

For my final semester of college I boarded the plane again. I was strolling along the streets of Jerusalem as if I never left. This time around I was resolved to take more purposeful pictures, shot through my viewfinder only, and looked for new angles on familiar streets. Once I was even late to the bus, because my friend and I used an hour of spare time running on the rooftops of Jerusalem and taking photos as if we’ve never been to the city before. I started to love my camera even more. We saw the world together, from colossal mosques of Istanbul to the pink-stone monuments of Petra to the frozen in time Pyramids. One hot summer afternoon a friend from States sent me a link to a photographer in California. It really is true, my life has never been the same. I don’t know when I saw my first picture, but I do remember when I first saw a picture I liked. It was nothing like anything I’ve seen before, same ordinary people in his photos, but from a whole new perspective. All the sudden I wanted to take picture of people, I wanted to try to do what this guys does, because to me his pictures were unreal.

Seeing amazing photographs changed everything for me and my photography journey officially began.

And here is a photo of me (with super short hair) from the Mount of Olives looking toward Jerusalem.

Come back tomorrow for some more 😉