In life, there is nothing more important than finding your passions and pursuing them. As children, our parents put us in many different activities until we found the few we loved. I remember taking dance, ice-skating, and gymnastics lessons, going to art, theater, and adventure camps, and trying out swimming, track, and tennis. Although I loved all the recreational activities I have tried, none of them turned into a passion of mine.

In October of my tenth-grade year, I decided to start taking photography classes; instantly, I fell in love. I began to enjoy capturing unsuspecting faces and belly laughs galore. Sifting through the pictures after each session became my favorite feeling in the world, as I loved seeing what I had caught on camera this time around. Once I had narrowed the hundreds of pictures down to the best ones, it was time to edit them.

I would spend about an hour or two on each group of photos, fixing the brightness, contrast, cropping, and all the other technical parts that make photos pop as much as possible. It was tedious but worth it in the end when I got to look at the photos and deliver them to my subject. Seeing the smiles and thank-you messages from them afterwards always made all the hours incredibly worth it.

This year I decided to take a Directed Study class- it's an elective in which I choose a subject to study and design projects around it. Naturally, I decided on photography. Some weekends are full of photo shoots for the different projects I had planned, including splatter paint and black and white closeups. Class time is dedicated to sorting through and editing those photos to perfection. The edits are quite minor but enough to enhance the photo overall.

Recently, I've gotten quite bored with editing. It's a meticulous, repetitive task that I now dread. I still love taking pictures, but my excitement for doing so has dropped now that my sixth-period class every day is full of brightness and saturation levels.

I've been told since I was little that sometimes in life, you're going to have to do things that you might not want to, that you don't like, and that may seem rather pointless in the long run. There will be countless monotonous tasks throughout your life that must be done in conjunction with what you love to do.

If editing photos has taught me anything, it is that no matter how many little tweaks you must make, it'll all be worth it in the end. Don't let a small, displeasing task keep you from embracing the passion for which you have worked so hard. In the end, all of the edits I make on my pictures lead to the amazing final product. As much as I don't enjoy editing, I do love photography, and nothing is going to stop me from pursuing it. Just like I'm not going to let my class hold me back from loving photography, never let anything hold you back from doing what you love.