Photo: “He Thought That She Was Kind”
Caption: He thought that she was kind and beautiful and innocent and in fact she was kind and beautiful; but she had been innocent too long. Her innocence was growing hard inside her like a stone, and one day she would be crushed by the weight of that stone.
-Duane Michals
Past
Present
When I was growing up, my mom always told me I was responsible for my own happiness. It was my task during this lifetime to find the things I?m passionate about. I consider my greatest personal achievement to be the discovery of those passions. i pride myself in my ability to say, ?I love this.? One such passion is photography.
Like most important discoveries in my life, my love of photography started subtly. I was eight years old and my mom entrusted into my hands a $25 Kodak Camera. I was to be its guardian for our trip to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. I remember my mom telling me to push the black button when I saw everyone through the little hold.
I was astonished to see the developed pictures; scenes that I saw with my eyes were translated onto glossy paper. As a child, i didn?t see the ill-framed images that my mom saw and complained about. What I saw were pieces of real life preserved onto paper for eternity.
A major event that steered me towards learning the art of photography was the befriending of my uncle?s old Single Lens Reflex camera. It was the summer before high school and I was visiting China.
When the same $25 dollars camera I had as a child finally expired, my uncle suggested that I use his SLR. This was the defining moment, the moment when my interest in photography morphed into my love for it. At the time, my uncle sat down next to me and slowly retrieved the camera from deep within the bag. he spoke the whole time but I cannot recall his words. The camera rested on his hands and I could see the black knobs with strange numbers on the metal body. I was intrigued.
My uncle?s verbal instructions were long and complicated. i had to make the f-stop compatible with the shutter speed... I was lost, but not deterred from learning to use the SLR. Every time I focused correctly or captured a great shot, I felt triumphant. I had finally attained total freedom in choosing how I wanted to portray the world. that summer I felt the kind of happiness that can only be felt through discovering and pursuing something I love.
In the summer of 2003, I chose to take my interest in photography a step further by learning to develop the pictures I took. As I stood in the darkroom at Long Island University, I felt that familiar joy as I slowly dipped the exposed photo paper into the chemical and watched as an image I captured almost magically appeared. I had reached another level.
Like my mom said, it is up to me to find my passions in life: ?You have the rice and water, will you cook it?? I followed my passion and it has changed me into a person who is more aware of what I need to feel fulfilled. I considered this realization to be my greatest personal achievement.