When I was just a tiny preteen becoming an “official” teenager in middle school, I had this fascination with taking low-quality photos on my Uncle’s old 3G iPhone that he gave me for my birthday one year. I only could use it as an iPod, but that didn’t stop me from using the camera! I would take extreme close up photos of my dogs or small objects in nature, then to finish, I would add an inspiring quote about happiness from Dr. Seuss or a quote about being myself from Oscar Wilde, then upload them to Instagram. I was never looking for likes or comments; I did it to show the beauty of what I could do with a camera and hopefully inspire my audience. People looked up to me and would constantly tell me that I inspire them.
In those moments, I realized more than ever, I wanted to inspire people.
Each year went on and I gathered thousands of these photos I had taken through such pivotal moments of my life, but one thing changed. Instead of me just copying quotes, I began to write them myself. I would think of how I was feeling in the moment and conspire these paragraphs that told truth and meant so much more to me when connecting them to a photograph I had taken. I would say something like, "it’s appreciating what you have, when you have it. Everyday, each decision impacts the future for whatever decision may have been made. Make those lasting impacts something worth caring about, something worth taking the time for." Whether of a friend, a beautiful flower or even a bee, I could reach people through different levels of communication and it was an amazing feeling.
Forward six years later, I am in my senior year of High School, taking AP Photography and continuously posting on Instagram with my “words of wisdom” as I like to call them. My high school photography teacher, Mr. Hodge, told me one day, what I was doing was called, Macro Photography or as we often called it just “lens flipping”. With my ability to finally take photos on a more “professional” level, with a professional camera, it was the only thing I wanted to do.
In each AP course, we have a concentration that consisted of twelve themed photos. My concentration focused on pretty things, basically. Flowers, colors, insects, patterns, but what was most important was the perspective of each photo that I took. My concentration focused on capturing patterns and shapes when examining nature up close. I was able to find unique shapes and textures in nature to show the viewer what is often unnoticeable. I wanted not only for my audience to see the beauty within nature and everything surrounding these objects, but I wanted to explain how important everything in the world should be to us. Why flowers need to bloom, why bees need flowers, why we need bees, and the list goes on… Not only did I do this for the sake of awareness, but I faced fears that I would have never thought I could; granted they’re small fears such; spiders, bees, ladybug (don’t ask), I fell in love with all of it.
Being here at Illinois State University, I have stepped out of my comfort zone, explored new areas around campus and even joined Odyssey! I am hoping with this next big step, I am really able to bring to the table what I am capable of writing and creating to inspire people and make a noticeable change. Helping people step out of their comfort zones or just making the world a cleaner and better place, one step, one word and one photograph at a time.