My Introduction to photography has all to do with animals, though it has not necessarily continued on that route. One of my earliest memories of photography is of the animals in National Geographic. I did not know how to read anything complicated at around 5 or 6. Frankly I was thrown off by any writing that referred to animals as male and female rather than boy and girl, but I spent hours looking at photos in those magazines pretending to read with excellent precision. My mom caught on to this obsession of mine and at one point when I was really disappointed about something I can no longer remember she said "Maggie I have a surprise for you." I was taken into my room and shown an entire wall plastered with animal photos from National Geographic and other magazines. Right then and there, at age 6, I was determined to be the greatest wildlife photographer the world had ever seen. There was nothing that could stop me from filling up my mom's rolls of film with endless cat photos, a star was born.
Now as time moved on and I began to develop a good rapport with household cat photos I decided to take it to the next level. I entered into the Dawson Creek Fair, Junior Photography Contest. I had thrown a cat into a horse feeding bucket, quickly clicked the shutter, and it in one serendipitous action produced a perfectly exposed picture. I won first place in the same category as my older brother. I will never forget that moment nor, I'm sure, will my brother.
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Still at the discovery stage of photography and my career as best wildlife photographer ever.
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I continued on with my animal photography eventually moving to digital, getting my own point and shoot camera, and filling up several people's computer memory with arbitrary animal photos. A few things have changed since then though, I realised halfway through my my rise to conquer wildlife/animal photography that people can be interesting subjects as well as animals, and it was much easier to communicate with them.
So, to begin with, I took an artistic spin on my non-cat photography
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| My brief stint into artistic photography in high school |
but after taking a picture of a woman on the street when I was in Mexico I knew I wanted more from photography just from the curiosity I had about this woman's story. Why her face had aged the way it had, what she had seen, what she dreamt of when she was young, and what she was thinking at that very moment.
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| The unnamed Mexican woman who started my love of photojournalism |
It's no surprise I ended up enrolling in Loyalist College's Photojournalism Program and been thoroughly engrossed in the many things I've had to learn. I will never know everything, for some people that is a discouraging statement. For me it is the realisation that I can learn something from absolutely anyone. Loyalist has taught me that, photojournalism has taught me that, and I plan to teach others about humanity the same way I have, through the pictures I take, and the stories I find.
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| My Favourite photo in the Loyalist College Photojournalism Program so far |
