July 20.
Not many of you may know this, but I am a semi-professional photographer.
(In other words, “I get paid to take pictures,” but it is not my primary source of income.)
I have always loved taking photos. Maybe it’s because it was my dad’s favorite hobby (“Dad, stop taking pictures of me eating my lunch. Ew.”), maybe it’s because I’m Japanese (“Oooh, tay-koo peek-cha?”), but when I finally picked up my first SLR at age 23, I felt a quickening. Something inside of me MOVED. In my head, the voice that had screamed into stale, empty silence for years sensed a gasp of fresh air, the dense, black emptiness was sliced open with a fragment of blinding light, and in the startled shock that followed, that voice found freedom.
It escaped.
*I* escaped.
I won’t say that I’m a great photographer. I have a lot of technical learning to do, and I do not spend as much time behind my camera as I should.
I WILL say that I am proud of the best pictures I take, when I press the button I can make my camera capture the image I picture in my head, and most of the time my work doesn’t suck.
And, if the thing I’m photographing is something I truly love?
Well, then my pictures look like this.
