Still Becoming
As we all have, I have spent my whole life becoming who I am, and I will continue to spend the rest of my life becoming who I am as I grow even more. I wanted to share with you how I became who I am as an artist.
I officially started to study photography in 2001 when I went to Arizona State University. I had finally picked a major, for my bachelor's degree, that I thought would really hold my interest. Photography was something that I had always been interested in and hoped to really hone in on skills that I had never learned before. I can still remember the shopping trip with my mom to pick out my first SLR film camera, which I still have, and then getting to learn all about how cameras worked, working with film and in the darkroom, and most of all how to be in control of the camera. Those early days were lots and lots of learning all about the camera and how I could use it to shape the art that I was creating.
I tested out many paths along the way in discovering what type of photographer I wanted to be. For a while, I wanted to be a newborn baby photographer, and with supplies and courses purchased, I have tried my hand at wedding photography, and family photography. Each and every idea has taken me one step closer to photographing the things that I enjoy most, flowers!
It was at the Academy of Art that I discovered my love of photographing flowers abstractly. This gave me permission, from myself mainly, to push photography in a different way than what I had always thought was the proper way or been taught. It allowed me to play and discover things about myself. I guess I always looked up to different masters of photography, like Imogen Cunningham, Ansel Adams, and Edward Weston, who always had everything in focus in their work.
Spending time creating, exploring, reading, and figuring out who you are and what you love. You may find that as you grow that one thing you once loved isn’t for you any longer or something you never saw beauty in before suddenly holds a great beauty for you! That is how it was for me with cacti, I never saw the beauty in many of them, and then last year and this year I have become obsessed with them and now have cacti growing in my backyard! This was a journey that I didn’t expect to be on, especially after living in Arizona for around 30 years!
What does this journey to becoming you look like? I write down my thoughts and ideas, sometimes multiple times, so that I have that idea someplace and then I can always come back to it again if right now is not the right time. I am excited that I get to be on the journey of becoming over and over for my whole life. Things change and things change us, rather than resisting this change I want to lean into it.
Tell me about your journey, was it a straight path, a winding path, or one with a lot of pit stops along the way?
