The fourth of July was a day to celebrate independence, but not in the way I anticipated. The chicken sizzled on the grill, as my father stood over the smoky fumes preparing dinner. With my camera in hand, I jumped up on the picnic table and took some pictures of him against the backdrop of the boardwalk and the ocean roaring in the distance.  That summer, digital photography was all new to me so I was doing a bit of experimenting with all the features not found in a film camera.  I was playing around with the sepia and monochrome settings on my Canon T3i and must have taken 30 photos just of my dad grilling.

Widening my view through my camera lens, I looked up to see that on the boardwalk, that I was using as my backdrop, three young girls walked one behind the other from tallest to shortest.  I pressed the shutter button and then looked at the screen as the image popped up.  What I saw in the photo was a story, the girls had a story, each one of them: Do they know each other?  Where are they from?  What were they up to that fourth of July evening?  What is their home lives like?  What do they want to do when they grow up?

At that moment, it hit me: everyone has a story, and capturing it is a beautiful thing.  It was then I realized I what direction I wanted to take my photography in.  I decided that I wanted to capture a story in all my photographs.  I wanted to express myself a bit in each one while simultaneously experiencing life from my subject’s perspective.

As a photographer, I see the world differently than others.  Photography comes with a sort of poetic nature to it, and I’ve known that for awhile.  Without directly explaining something with specific words, a person can capture the essence, the emotion, the mood, the passion of a moment through an image.

When I first started out, I would take poems that I related to, use them as inspiration and try to put what I thought the poem was trying to say into an image.  In the summer of 2013, I took two film classes at Appel Farm Performing Arts Camp.  In my second year of the program, I knew I was going to have to complete a project over the course of the month.  Inspiration struck me as I sat in my English class listening to my teacher read “The Bells” by Edgar Allan Poe.  Images flooded my head.  I decided that in four photos, I would capture the meaning of the wedding bells, golden bells!  “Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!” The new couple in the stanza are madly in love, full of happiness, and excited for the future.  At this point in their relationship, they believe that nothing could go wrong, that this is happily ever after for them. Originally, I planned to photograph all four stanzas and the different type of bells, that show the lifespan of a relationship: the tinkling bells of new love, the resounding, crisp sounds of wedding bells, the sirens that ring when conflict occurs, and the death bell that tolls when the relationship dies.  However, as some projects do, it evolved into something different. I completed only a depiction only of the bells of new love; I wanted people to look at them and feel warm and happy.  I hadn’t experience romantic love yet myself; my inexperience with the emotion translated into the image.  Yet, at the same time, through the poetry, I was given a glimpse of the thrill and invincibility that comes with it. I captured the essence of my experience by directing my two young models, both of whom were just as inexperienced with love as I was.

I don’t always use poetry as inspiration; actually, more often I use my feelings, experiences, and thoughts on life. One series I completed that comes to mind was titled “Passion.” Passion, one of the most profound and intense feelings a person can experience, dominates a person’s being. One’s obsession with that activity overcomes them while the person eats, sleeps, and breathes.  When a person is immersed in the activity he’s passionate about, nothing else matters: all other matters of life fade away. Even when you’re not working on it, you’re still thinking the way it makes you think.  That’s what I feel toward photography.  I wanted to show that passion on other people’s faces.  In my photographs I wanted capture the emotion on my subjects’ faces while doing what they love most.  I wanted the viewer to get a sense of their focus and disconnectedness with reality as they took part in the activity.  To avoid the activity taking away this emotion, I zoomed into the subject’s face then I took the photo of what they were doing and displayed that underneath the image of their face.  For example, one of my models was a bassist named Emma. I shot Emma while she was playing bass but allowed only her face to fill the frame, then I shot a photo of her bass.  To be truly good at something you have to be passionate about it.  When I see a good bassist, I can see the passion in her face.

Every life is beautiful. Every beautiful moment deserves the chance be captured.  Every shot captures not only my subject, but a bit of who I am as well. Both the photographer and the subject are speaking in the image.  In this way, I’ve lived many lives, and I anxiously await to experience the lives of others, outside of my community.