Just So You Know...

I saw a humorous circle graph on the computer a while ago that had, 'real photographers' and 'teenagers with a fancy camera who call themselves photographers'. Teenagers, as you may guess, was far bigger.

This made me laugh so hard. I wasn't offended in the slightest because, you see, I don't call myself a photographer. I don't actually plan to sell photos or anything. Mom convinced me to sell my pictures at our family auction and I did it, but it was really embarrassing.

I take pictures for a couple reasons. One is that I like to. Seriously, it's just fun. Here is a picture of the time I first discovered my love of photography:

Look on my face: "Huh? What are you doing? I'm the one with the camera!" (Photo taken by Grandpa at an aquarium in Seattle)

Another reason is that - besides the above picture - I don't have any other photos of me when I was taking pictures. I hate it when people take pictures of me. I have a select few pictures that don't look awful. But no one ever takes pictures of the photographer. Well, except Grandpa.

Reason three: Research. Memories. A couple months ago, I looked out the window and saw this picture:

And yes, the rainbow was just as faint in real life.

I thought, "Wow, that's beautiful. I have to remember that so that I can put that in a scene." But how was I to remember it if I didn't take a picture? So I did.

Fourth reason: I need a picture that doesn't exist. A while ago, I was looking through my list of names for the Espritans (think Dryads, tree people) of my book and I saw two names that brought characters to my mind, Peach and Wolf. I thought, "Those names are such opposites, wouldn't it be hilarious if they got married?" And the plot was born.

Now I like to have pictures for my character. Pictures that symbolize them. For one character, I have a picture of a tiny green sprout poking out of a pile of rocks, for another I have a red fox, Peach needed a picture. And it needed to be of a peach, of course. And I knew exactly what I wanted it to look like.

So I looked up 'peach' on Google images. It was extremely unsuccessful. I wanted a soft, sweet picture, not a picture of produce on a tree (or video game characters, for that matter). Dad bought peaches that evening. So my way was clear. I set up my wonderful studio...


...and took this picture (among many others):

So that is why I take pictures. I don't think my pictures look professional in any way and I don't want you thinking that I do. I'm a teenager with a nice camera, a wild imagination, and a very exacting idea of what I want my pictures to look like. That's all.

Oh, and here is the picture I found on Google for Wolf. It isn't exactly what I wanted because I don't actually have the resources to take pictures of wolves. But it works anyway: