Photography - Getting Started
You must start.
I know I totally get it. This is the hardest part because before you do, your thoughts get in the way with “what will other people think? I’m not good enough.” Well, you’re never good enough when you first start. And most people stay in the thinking phase and don’t actually do anything with their ideas. But not you.
Sometime it takes a difficult season, a loss of a resource or person, to force us out of our comfort zone. But from that, can come the beginning of something that would have never happened otherwise.
I talked about it for years and I finally bought a professional camera. As God orchestrates it, he had me meet Vina who loves photography and learning to grow her hobby into hopefully a business one day. From her I met JonJon, an inspiring food photographer and content creator. I heard about Tony, a super nice business owner of Pro Camera Hawai`i. And finally, my long-time photographer and friend, Karen De Borja, was about to go out on maternity with her 7th, yes 7th baby!
It was time to stop making excuses. Get a point and shoot. And start pointing and shooting. It was the only way I would learn and even if I had no desire to become a professional photographer or start a business, I always wanted to learn the craft. I’ve always appreciated others’ work and wanted to understand and at least empower myself to do some if I ever needed to (like for the month of July while Karen was out).
Though I have wonderful friends in photography who I’ve admired over the years (my cousin Tracy, Travis, Darin, Nikki, Vina, Colby, Cat) and others, I just always thought, “I wish I could do that.”
I see beautiful things every day that I want to capture and thanks to the improvement of phone camera, once Apple came out with portrait mode, I felt empowered. People started saying they love my photos. It wasn’t really about the photos, but it was about capturing the beauty I saw and hoped I could share that same image, that same inspiration, that same moment of gratitude with others.
So I picked up a camera and started shooting. You can pick something up and start too! Thank you everyone for encouraging me!
erin’s experience tips: Start clicking and shooting.
I texted Tony and said, “What should I get? I just want to learn a little. Take picture of my family, our chocolates, and things around me to share on my website and social and maybe get into some video next.” This is what he recommended and it’s literally a “point and shoot” camera as they call it.
Their tip: Start in the “automatic” setting. They’ve probably seen this tons of times too. The hardest part is getting started. Get in automatic and then shift gears from there. :)
