The photographer
I've always had a fascination with emotion. How you can see it on anyone's face if you search hard enough. How you can evoke it with just a word. And how you can capture it for eternity through a camera. It's not only in people either. You can find it everywhere you look.
When I was a child, I used to see EVERYTHING as having emotion. I was sure my second hand toy was happy now to have a new home. Or when our fat ol' tube TV broke and we put it on the curb when I was 10, I thought it looked sad and lonely.(I blame feeling this way on the movie "The Brave Little Toaster"!)
I always found the emotion. I've transferred that gift into photography. At an early age, I started with an old 35mm camera where you had to crank a lever to wind up the film. During the summers, I would ask my Grandmother to take me out on photography expeditions where she lives in Princess Anne, MD. We photographed old worn down fishing boats and abandoned houses with broken windows and the curtains still up. I loved prompting people with things like "Show me what you would look like if you just ate the best piece of cake you ever had!" or I'd make them laugh by saying something silly. It all had feeling to it! I went through several rolls of film each time and used my own money to have them developed. I didn't mind. I loved finding out how my tiny visions turned out on the paper.
I started to realize that people loved the pictures I took of them and their family because it was what they actually looked like... the photos were GENUINE! No fake smiles and posed hands. Just real emotions of real people. I was falling in love with a craft that would become the way of my future life.