About

 I attend UCF and work for Monocle: Bespoke Photography taking wedding photos . I hope to start taking grad/senior photos in the future to expand my portfolio so contact me though my Facebook page                                     if you are interested in either of those! 

You can find monocle here: 

 

My story

I found my interest in photography in around the 8th grade. Me and my friend group would make "Funny" videos for YouTube and I would be the one to "edit" these videos (If you can call what I did editing). I always found myself more interested in the still frames of the videos, choosing the exact moments that my friends looked nice and taking what movie maker called "snapshots" that I would then post to my Facebook page as "sneak peaks" to these videos. I hated what low quality these snapshots were so I swapped from my camcorder to my IPod camera. The improvement wasn't much but I was at this point intentionally taking still images. Sometimes my middle school graphic design teacher would even let me use her camera to take photos for the school news, she never used my shots but using her camera was exciting for me anyway.

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    It wasn't until about my sophomore year of high school that I began to take photography more seriously. My freshmen graphic design teacher was hardly a design teacher at all, he treated my passions with zero respect and made fun of our videos, photography, and more numerous times, hes defiantly the only design teacher I ever had that told me designers were useless. Needless to say most of us were happy to see his name wasn't on our schedules sophomore year. I remember excitedly waiting to meet the new design teacher, each class before it imagining what the teacher would be like. I knew he wasn't the legend design teacher everyone talked about but any real design teacher was a winner in my book. I got to the class and the guy started showing us his photography work. I was incredibly interested. I had never seen photos on canvas, or really thought about doing anything with my photos other than posting them on my Facebook. Sadly for me the rest of the class was more interested in complaining the school hired the wrong person or demanding Taco Tuesdays so photo show and tell ended rather quickly. I began showing my photos to the new teacher, he had shown his after all right? He was encouraging but never fake. His complements always meant something because he never complemented just for the sake of complementing. He told me design and photography went well together so I became encouraged to further my photography hobby to support my design hobby. I decided to ask my family to give me money for holidays so I could save for a camera and they surprised me with my Nikon D3200. I took photos, did my design work, included my photos in my design work, and my teacher gave me feedback that helped me to continue to improve. It was my Junior year I realized I could be looking at more than just a hobby. 

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My english teacher, as all the english teachers, made us do a project on colleges and majors. Graphic design was my cluster so I choose that, many people choose their clusters. The more I researched however, the more it became real. 6 years I put into improving my design skills, why couldn't I actually be a designer?  I went to my design class preparing myself in my mind to ask my teacher what he thought but I wasn't the only one with this idea. Another girl let him know she wanted to attend full sail for graphic design and he immediately shut her down with something as simple as "don't" . He wasn't wrong, design is incredibly competitive at the college level and she was the bottom of our class but I lost my confidence. I decided to wait till after class to ask more privately, I didn't mind being shut down but not like that. To my surprise his reaction to me was much different saying something along the lines of "If I could do it, so can you" It was that moment I became so much more serious about design and photography.

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    I decided to sign up for yearbook so I wouldn't have a year in between my design classes and college to get rusty (My school only offered 3 years of design classes). It was the best and worst decision I ever made for my photography journey. the teacher was horrid to me but I got to meet the person who changed my photography for good. I was at a football game when I was approached by a man who fit the exact description of the graphic design teacher we should have had, its a small town so a person with the description of "loud British man with a camera" wasn't common. I knew immediately I wanted to learn from him  He offered to allow me to join him for the game which I was more than excited about. Shortly after I was given the opportunity to join him for a wedding, and it was immediately my favorite type of photography. Weddings are one of the few places where there is genuine happiness throughout the day,There is no shortage of moments to capture. I hope to continue taking wedding photos for as long as possible.