My first camera was a Christmas gift.
I don’t remember the brand, but I remember it was a translucent, neon green and could only hold about a handful of poor-quality photos.
The first photo I took with it was my grandparent’s house in Bellaire, Texas, at night with the Christmas decorations aglow. That was the beginning.
Since then, it seems that I usually had a camera on me. In high school, I had a 3.2-megapixel Sony Cyber-shot (I still have this). Occasionally I would shoot on my mom’s Canon EOS Rebel XS, which I still shoot today.
Pop!
In one of the first good pictures I took with my t1i, a firework pops over Austin, Texas.
July 5, 2010.
Canon EOS Rebel t1i | ISO 100 • 18mm • f/5.6 • 3.0
When I graduated high school my parents bought me a Canon t1i. That was my first DSLR.
I kept that thang on me, snapping some of the stupidest images that remain in the depths of folders on hard drives that haven’t seen the light of day in years.
In 2012, while taking basics at Blinn College and still dead set on studying meteorology at Texas A&M, I enrolled in a photography class to fulfill an art credit.
Igor Kraguljac, the instructor, was a Serbian cinematographer that graduated from Texas A&M with a masters in visualization and if I remember correctly, that was his first semester teaching.
He was a wonderful instructor, and went on to become my mentor for many years.
Around this time, I was highly infatuated (ok I still am) with Nine Inch Nails and all things Trent Reznor. A couple years prior, “The Social Network” score was released which featured datamoshed/glitched artwork by Rob Sheridan. More recently, Trent Reznor’s side project How to Destroy Angels released “An Omen_ EP” which also featured some glitch-style photography by Rob Sheridan. I was obsessed.
One of the projects in photography required us to shoot long-exposure photos.
Y’all know me. I couldn’t just shoot a regular photo with taillights streaking across the frame to show I understood the lesson. I had to go all-out.
As the train passes
My friend, Courtney, stands in front of a passing train in Bryan, Texas. November 18, 2012.
Canon EOS Rebel t1i | ISO 100 • 18mm • f/6.3 • 5.0
I asked my friend, Courtney, if she wanted to model for a late-night photoshoot. Thankfully, she said yes. We went to downtown Bryan and got a couple shots here and there. While I was setting up one shot, I heard a train horn and immediately ditched the shot and told Courtney to run to the crossing guard.
I told her to stand perfectly still, and as the train slowly passed through the crossing I opened the shutter on my trusty t1i for 5 seconds. Perfect.
The original photo was neat to begin with, but I opened it in a text editor, deleted/cut/pasted some code here and there and added the final product as an overlay in Photoshop. I felt like a digital genius. I submitted the photo for the project and awaited my grade.
The following class, Igor approached me and asked me what I was going to school for. When I proudly said meteorology he looked surprised.
“That’s the stupidest shit,” he said.
He was right. And even at that time I knew he was right, so I wasn’t really offended at that remark. But what the hell else was I going to do with my life?
Igor told me that I needed to become a photographer.
“Can I make a living doing photography? I was always told that photography would just be a hobby."
He looked me in the eye and told me that he made more at one photoshoot than he did instructing for a month at Blinn.
I was sold.
I began looking at my options at A&M, since by then I was already sipping the maroon koolaid.
I found agricultural communications and journalism and within the course of a couple months decided to jump track and completely change the course of my life.