I started picking up a digital camera in my early childhood. More recently in 2020 I went out and purchased my own camera, a Canon eos M50 mkii. I was using my mothers old Sony DSLR camera, safe to say it was out dated. I wanted the new technology where I could see real time on the screen of what my photos were to look like once I press the shutter button. When I was just starting out learning all of the settings it was hard to learn what I needed to change when I couldn’t see what was changing on the screen except for a number. My new Canon really enabled me to observe my work and what setting did what.

After learning the variety of settings and the new style of camera I was quick to receive good feedback from what I have produced. At the time I was shooting at no cost to my friends and family doing portraits and then capturing my hunting trips. It was crucial to do this in the beginning to allow me to get a feel of actual shoots and more of have tons of shots to start learning more and more editing styles. During this time I did lots of research like, “Is ISO bad?”, “How to color grade”, “Poses for my clients” and so on. I would highly recommend to everyone to spend lots of time on YouTube, or even now TikTok has tons of short videos explaining each small aspect of photography.

Once I felt I improved my skills enough I reached out to some racers and went out and photographed their first race of the year. Once I got done editing I delivered the photos for free to the people I knew. The photos had turned out so great that they wanted to pay for them. Now these people are using my photos all on their social media and tagging me. More people from the races see that and reach out for photos of them. It quickly became a flooded list of people asking for photos, but it showed me that I have grown and learned so much to be able to sell photos on my first real shoot. Since then I have attended numerous races for the same group and done well each time. Not only that but I am getting far more compliments on my work and recently got my media credentials to photograph sports at my university.