I see the world differently.

I’ve been taking photographs since I was about 13 years old when I got my camera. I started by taking photos of random things like my flowers in my backyard. As I grew older I kept my photos to myself.

I never mentioned it to people who I met, I never showed people my pictures. For me I felt like my photos weren’t good enough, I stopped taking nature pictures and focused more on sports photos. I emphasized my photography with hockey pictures and have taken action shots for 6 NHL seasons, consecutively. This decision seemed like it meant nothing, but while I was thinking about this, I discovered the real reason why I halted my outdoor photography.

I found a larger passion for sports photography because nature shots slowly began to bore me and action shots gave me something to focus on. It added diversity to my photos. Nature photos started to feel repetitive and sports photos allowed me to get involved with two things I'm extremely passionate about, NHL hockey and photography.

I recently I stopped taking as many sports photos and went back to focusing on nature shots. I did this because I was realized more and more that my hockey photos looked just like the photos you’d find by just googling ‘Chicago Blackhawks photos.’ I was looking for something that allowed me to show my artistic view and that’s why I switch over to nature photos.

As I started building my portfolio a Senior year, I began looking at my pictures and showing them off. I used everyone from friends to pets. I was taking pictures of everything. I now bring my camera everywhere; it’s almost always in my car and I find myself taking more time to take the scenic route home just to pull into a forest preserve and spend time taking photos. While I was building my portfolio, I wasn’t hesitant to post my pictures on various social media outlets. Because of this I was approached by many people asking me to take their photos ranging from birthday parties to wedding photo shoots.

For me this is amazing because I always view my photos as mediocre and to have people asking me to take their wedding photos seems surreal. I would have never pictured already building a business like this at the age of seventeen.