A friend had just purchased a Canon Rebel OS in hopes of shooting better pictures. That fateful day, she had been taking pics all over the city. She wanted some of herself so she asked me to take some. Prior to this I had no interest whatsoever in photography. I was quite reticent about being on camera talk less using it.
It only took a few minutes for me to fall in love with photography. There have been very few times in my life that I have felt completely at ease. As my friend posed and contorted her body trying to get the perfect pose, I was in a zone behind the camera snapping away.
I had tasted from the elixir of passion and I wanted more. From then on, I used every opportunity I could muster to be around that friend and use her camera. My first shots were quite bad, but the more I worked on my craft, the better I got. I could see the marked improvement from my earlier shots to what I was doing months after.
I was still broke and I could barely afford to pay rent, feed and clothe myself. Buying a camera was simply not feasible. I knew I had to have one, I had come to the realization that my future was tied into photography. I took on any and all sorts of odd jobs I could lay my hands on just to be able to buy a camera. For a broke guy like me, a thousand dollar gadget was a lot of money in my books.
But with an almost singular focus on the task at hand, I achieved my goal in surprisingly short time. It was with much joy and gusto that I purchased my first camera, a day I will never forget. I literally shot thousands of pictures in those first few months of my having it. I became quite familiar with the city of Chicago in the process. Very few cities offer as much diversity as it does. One can go from massive skyscrapers and aluminum behemoths dotting the landscape to beautiful country scenery in a matter of moments. The Windy City as it is popularly known remains one of the most scenic places I have ever shot at. I owe so much of my growth as a photographer to it.
It took me a while before I started making some real money from my passion. At some point I actually thought of giving up pursuing photography as a profession. I felt I had something to give the world but no one was paying attention. Meanwhile I had bills to pay and my creditors could care less about what type of talent I had.
As fate would have it, my pictures would find their way via an online submission to the desk of an editor of an online stock photo website. Due to the sheer volume of how many pictures I had taken, I was quite valuable in their eyes and before long was making decent money, enough to stand on my own.
In short, that was how I got into photography, but I am guessing, that's not really what you want to know. Bare with me as I strip the story of my life further. I promise I will get to the juicy parts soon.