From left to right: A Polaroid 600 OneStep, a Nikon D5000 with a Nikkor 18-55 mm DX lens, and a Nikon Z7 with a Nikkor Z 24-120 mm S lens, captured with my (rather lackluster) smartphone camera.

I’ve dabbled in photography for as long as I can remember.

I started many years ago with a humble Polaroid 600 OneStep camera when I was a kid, gleefully snapping photos of whatever caught my attention and then watching in awe as the little plastic box ejected a small square photo that developed before my eyes. Fast forward a few years to 2009 when I was a freshman in high school, I joined my school’s newspaper as a photographer and upgraded to my first real camera – a Nikon D5000 with both 18-55 mm and 55 – 300 mm lenses. While my time with the school’s newspaper would only last a few years as my interests changed, that D5000 stuck with me, becoming my hobby’s workhorse for the next 13 years or so.

Up until about 2022, photography remained just that for me – a hobby. Something to toy with, to dabble in from time to time with no real goal or vision in mind, not a clue in the world what all those buttons, settings and markings on my camera meant or how to actually compose a halfway-decent photograph. That all changed when I traveled to Europe with my family for the first time.

Thrust into a new, magnificent environment and surrounded by a wealth of ancient architectural wonders and beautiful Mediterranean vistas the likes of which I’ve never seen before, I found that Nikon D5000 nearly permanently affixed to my face as I snapped photo after photo after photo as I pushed that little camera’s shutter to its limit.

US 1 Mile Marker 0 in Key West, Florida, as seen from the front passenger seat of a car.

When the trip ended, I came home with 2,576 images that I needed to sort through and edit – several orders of magnitude greater than any batch I’d ever edited previously. For the next month, I meticulously combed through every image using Darktable, deciding whether to reject or develop them. Ultimately, I whittled the initial 2,576 images down to about 300 after my final edits, at which point I was left with a dilemma: having invested such a significant length of time in these 300 photos, what now?

And that’s… when I decided to start selling prints. On Redbubble, initially, then trying my hand at a bit of microstock via Shutterstock.

I found myself rather quickly dissatisfied with those initial attempts at turning my hobby into something more akin to a side business. I began researching the fundamentals of photo composition, proper camera settings and image editing techniques, how to build a proper photography website (though, admittedly, I’m still actively working on that front - pardon the mess!) as well as a modern replacement camera for my venerable Nikon D5000. I settled on a used Nikon Z7 body and paired it with a Nikkor Z 24-120 mm S-series lens.

...Which brings us to today.

Now, full disclosure: I’ve taken neither a formal photography nor a Photoshop / Lightroom course thus far in my life; my college background is in Engineering (B.S. in Mechanical, M.S. in Systems). My collective knowledge of photography and photo editing is the sum total of an embarrassing amount of time spent watching how-to videos on YouTube and a pair of e-books I recently purchased off Amazon. I am the very definition of an amateur photographer.

But that’s ok.

Much like what everyone says about life, photography is a journey: we all have to start somewhere. I figure that while I have put some time in behind the viewfinder in the past, today would be a good day to mark the “official” start on my own professional photography journey – and furthermore that I should publicly document that journey here, as well as share any tips, favorite photogenic locations, and more along the way.

Be sure to either check back here regularly or sign up for email updates as I do intend to periodically update this blog… especially for the near future – I just came back from an 18-day trip to Europe (again) and have another 1200 or so photos to go through, edit, and share here 📸

Photography Isn’t About the Destination… It’s a Journey.