I fell in love with photography back in 2003. I was in college in Southern California and under an exchange program that my school offered, I attended the University of the Virgin Islands in St. Croix for one semester. Prior to my trip, my mom gave me a 2.0 megapixel Canon PowerShot for my birthday. I knew this trip would be the trip of a lifetime, and I wanted to capture that memory but I didn’t like the idea of waiting to develop film.
During my time in St. Croix, I visited other Caribbean islands like St. Thomas and St. John USVI, Puerto Rico, St. Maarten, Antigua, and Martinique. The Caribbean, especially St. Croix and St. John, are just beautiful places with its clear turquoise water and practically white sandy beaches. The landscape pictures I took of all the beaches I’ve been to were absolutely gorgeous. I remember after visiting a new beach, I would take my favorite picture from my camera and use it as my new wallpaper for my computer. To this day, I still take scenic pictures and use them as my wallpaper.
When the semester was over, I came back to my hometown. I showed the pictures to my friends and one told me I should sell them as postcards. Even though I took landscape pictures from a point-and-shoot, they are by far, still my favorite pictures 10 years later.
Here are my favorite Caribbean pictures taken from my 2.0 megapixel Canon PowerShot and slightly edited in Photoshop:
This one below is still my favorite picture. I remember taking this picture in St. Maarten as I was boarding the cruise ship. I was surprised how the picture turned out.
My St. Croix experience sparked an interest in landscape photography. I would want to visit national parks just to take awesome landscape pictures.
Here are more landscape pictures I took years later:
I purchased my first DSLR, a Nikon D50, in 2006 and continued to take more landscape pictures. For a couple of years, I was just taking pictures in auto mode, and then later fiddled around with the shutter speed and aperture.
Even when I was either shooting with a point-and-shoot or auto mode on my DSLR, many people told me I have a good eye for photography. I think it’s because the way I frame my shots.
I took an online photography class from my local community college just last Spring. I already had prior knowledge in shutter speed and aperture, but it pushed me to take more and more pictures, as well as thinking about my shots. The teacher seemed to be impressed with my shots and I received an A in the class.
Here are a couple shots from my final project:
I took the shot below by setting my camera on a tripod and putting it on a timer.
This sparked an interest in take pictures of people. After doing my first trade for print shoot for a calendar last September, I’ve been really hooked on photography to the point where I think about it and talk about it all day and night. It’s starting to get to the point where I’m getting bored of my full-time job and freelance job (web/graphic design). Maybe I’m more excited about photography because it’s a new thing of mine, and I’ve been getting mostly positive feedback about my pictures. I would love to focus on my photography full-time, but I know it’s a hard career to get into. Considering that I’m primarily bringing in income between my husband and I, along with the fact that I have so much more to learn, I know I can’t jump right into being a full-time photographer.