My interest in photography came early when my dad got a nice Olympus SLR film camera when we moved to Africa. I remember loving to use the ‘big zoom’ lens that he had to get pictures of everything but specially people’s expressions real close! It was in High School my senior year that I finally got my hands deep into the heart of photography. I got the chance to take a photo class and also be one of the yearbook photographers. Not only did they give us cameras to use, but we were able to develop our own stuff! I got to know the darkroom real well and was fascinated by how pictures just ‘appeared’ after putting the exposed paper in those chemicals. I learned a lot from my teacher and to this day I give a lot of credit to Dave Tiezen for sparking my interest in photography.
Soon enough I was ready to upgrade and started using the Nikon D70. At this point in time was when I got my first real job opportunity from Julie who had just graduated and needed a photographer for her wedding later that summer. I hesitantly accepted the offer and studied like crazy that whole summer before the wedding. After all I had NEVER done a wedding so I couldn’t screw this up! The day came and I found myself getting so caught up in the whole day, the emotions, the camera settings, lighting, the stress of making sure that you catch those moments and everything else that came with the day. At the end of it all I was exhausted and felt like I had just played a 90 minute soccer game! When I finally gave them their pictures Dan and Julie loved them which made me so excited and hungry to do all that all over again!