Photography has always interested me since I was a child. My uncle always let me play and use his camera when he was occupied with work. One of my fondest childhood memories is receiving a disposable camera from my mother and taking pictures of anything that happened in my day to day basis. Eventually during eighth grade. I decided to finally invest in my own camera, but I still had many things to learn before I would be somewhat proud of my work.

I met a friend who properly taught me to take photos during sophomore year of high school. He taught me the complete basics, like light balance and using the camera in manual to learn. He also taught me small niches, like photographers never carry the strap that cameras packages come since it makes them look like tourists. My friend was even nice enough to give me assignments to help further improve my photography, I once had to go to the park and take pictures of flowers.

After I learned the basics, I realized that our photographic styles were very different and had to learn for myself on how to improve in my own style of photography. While he excelled at cityscapes and landscapes, I excelled at bokeh photography, which uses the focus in camera to make lights appear more bright and makes the focus of the photo stand out. I then decided to carry a camera everywhere I went.

I was always seen with a camera in or out of school. Most of the people in my high school only really cared about sports, with some exceptions, but no one really had an issue with me being bringing it around, and as a result, I enjoyed being different than my classmates. It made me stand out from my peers even though I was not very vocal. I wore my camera like a badge of honor, and when I did not bring it, I felt like I was missing out on potential shots. People always told me to join the photography club at school but it never really piqued my interest since the club would have me take pictures in a way that I did not like very much. I always thought that the photos the photography club took seemed very bland and did not have many purposes in them. It was always about an even at school but the pictures never had any identity.

On school trips, I became very popular because people wanted to get photos taken of them at the exotic places we visited. I never had an issue with it because it was good practice, but being asked constantly for a photo because repetitive very quickly. Looking through a camera lens makes a person care more about details through the glass. But only using that lens for the use of two to three people can be very stale unless the background is interesting. I eventually had to tell people that I did not want only pictures of classmates on my camera. Nowadays I rarely pick up my camera, but I learned to appreciate the world around me because of it.

Reflection

I had a difficult time picking out an artifact since I feel like I change as a person very quickly. But my camera is something that I enjoyed for a very long time and it reminds me of friends that I have not talked to in a long time. I used to be very close to these people and now they feel like a distant dream. I also feel that my camera also represents me in some sort of way. Photography is by no means unpopular, but it was unpopular in high school by comparison to sports. This obviously makes the camera a “weird” item in my high school. Just as I was, but not in a bad way, I was very different and awkward compared to my peers but I never had any backlash since I never really bothered anyone with my “differences”, even if everyone in my high school felt like a carbon copy of each other. Nowadays I do not think people care about the differences, especially since college is so diverse I feel like I can openly be myself without having strange looks. Just like people do not bat an eye to cameras in the real world, I do not get looked at for not enjoying team sports, and instead of enjoying anime, ice skating, or anything else. The purpose of the paper was to show my audience that I am and also try to be different and try to show it, even though I do not directly say it or try to talk about it.