Why photography?

I ask myself sometimes how I chose photography as a business. It’s something I never considered I would be doing as a business until the last few years. Here is my story.

When I was in high school in Lincoln, I had the opportunity to join the school newspaper or yearbook staff. I chose the yearbook, thinking that would be fun. I wrote articles and shot photographs for the yearbook. It was also during this time that I took a few photography classes and learned how to develop film and print photographs. I even set up a darkroom in my home, mixed chemicals, had an enlarger to make photos, and all that stuff.

I went to college and continued this pursuit, majoring in journalism. As a journalism major, I wrote articles and had opportunities to shoot photographs as a photojournalist. While I always took photos, my emphasis was on writing. I wrote articles about a variety of topics and still write today as a freelance writer for some area publications.

Photography was never far from me, as I always had a camera nearby. When my brother Randy decided several years ago to resurrect an old business we had started as very young adults, Moments in Time, photography again became something that I started doing more of. Our business started out as a wedding videography business. Randy started out on his own, videotaping a few weddings. The next year I joined him and we did the video together.

It was soon after this that I had the realization that adding photography to the business would be a good step. Randy had years of portrait photography experience under his belt, and photography was something that I did off and on for several years. I started out with a lot of practice, offering to shoot portraits for free for some friends. I learned a lot. I took a lot of classes to gain knowledge and experience in the art of photography. As with every field, you get better with practice. I made mistakes in some of those first weddings and portraits I shot and I learned from them.

So the question remains, why photography? I find it fascinating and challenging making art that people like. I like to make pretty photographs for people that they will want to put in albums and hang on the wall. Making sure you get the best photograph you can remains challenging, but I feel like I’ve met this challenge and have been able to give pretty photographs to my clients that they are happy with.

Photography is not only challenging, it’s fun and rewarding. What a great sense of accomplishment I get when I see a photo that I took that I think is great. This is why I have chosen photography as my business profession.