5 Years Later...

It was the end of April in 2014 when I sat in Excalibur Tattoos in Shelton getting some work done and chatting with my tattoo artist. I was talking to her about how I had a desire to be a photographer. At that point in time I had no idea that the owner of the shop, "Duck" Unitas was also a photographer and teacher. He said to me, "I have my backup camera in the back. why don't you take that for the weekend and come back and show me what you got and we can work on your skill set from there. So that's exactly what I did. I took the Canon 40D and went to the park, snapping shots of whatever caught my eye. In retrospect, they're all just random shots of my friends, my car, Seaside Park and Short Beach. There was no vision for what I was shooting, I just had a camera that was better than anything I had ever used in my posession and I was going wild with it. In retrospect, these images are what you would expect from anyone who just got their hands on their 1st camera but the fact is that in that one weekend, I realized what I was passionate about. It was tax season so what I decided to do with what I had left after getting current on bills was buy my 1st DSLR camera. A Canon EOS Rebel T5i. I had took that camera with me almost everywhere and booked as much studio time as I could afford.

At that point in time, I had a decent job so I took the chance and invested in myself. I learned as much as I could but still didn't consider myself a photographer. It wasn't until an established photographer by the name of G. Gregory Geiger looked at my work and asked how much I charge my clients to shoot with me, I told him simply, "I don't. Because I'm still learning." To which he simply responded, "It's time to start charging people. You're ready." It just so happened that soon thereafter, I had lost my job at the cable company and at the time, my camera was my only means of making money. I tried another job after that but left it soon thereafter to pursue photography full time.