One year ago, on July 23rd, 2014, I picked up my first “real camera”.

This has been no ordinary year. This was twelve intense months of learning, of frustration, of travel, of meeting new people and discovering an entirely new perspective of the world.

Before picking up a camera, a Canon 70D, I had been adventuring and snapping photos with my phone, but there was something about this — about having a camera — that gave me a pass to take my love of adventure and photography to the next level. It was an interesting year to say the least, and I used my camera to capture the highs and lows of my adventures, to do personal projects, to capture others’ special moments, to travel and to discover the beauty in my own city.

Let me first be honest about this past year — most of it was spent learning, and a large majority of the photos that I took were garbage. The metadata on the photos from my first three months of shooting would make any seasoned photographer cringe.

At the outset, I sprayed and prayed with a happy trigger finger. Guilty.

It took me a long time to feel comfortable and to admit I was at the bottom of a steep learning curve. At my first photo meetup with the new camera, I shot alongside two experienced photographers, Rob and Vallen. While shooting, they were asking me about things like the sensor, my lenses, “What f-stop are you shooting at?” to which I would respond with a blank stare and red-faced embarrassment.

I honestly knew nothing about photography. What the hell was an f-stop?

My experience in drawing and painting gave me an understanding of composition, but the technical stuff of cameras and photography went way over my head.

A year later, I can say I’ve picked up a few things, and for the most part I have no trouble shooting manual or understanding what is going on when I take a picture. I owe all of that to the help of other photographers who offered advice and patience, showed me the ropes, answered my questions and were open to shooting with someone who had little-to-no experience. To everyone that helped me and to everyone in the Mke_illgrammers community, thank you — none of this would have been possible without you.

If there was one thing that I learned in this year is that in photography, you can fake it until you make it. The platforms that are available for distributing visual content have significantly lowered the bar for getting your work seen and your voice heard. Also, the ability to hide blemishes and technical errors on these platforms, especially Instagram, brings the work of amateurs a lot closer to the work of professionals. A phone photo and a high res camera photo look similar on Instagram.

At first, I didn’t use this as an excuse to suck, but rather as a way to get closer to the ideal. There is a difference between phone photography and camera photography and I would be cheating myself if I didn’t try to get technically better and to do more with the tools I had. But, being able to have my work look good without fully understanding the equipment gave me a foot in the door and an ability to work with others who could teach me how to get better.

I view photography as an art and so the business side of it has always been intimidating. I don’t necessarily like the idea of money influencing the direction of a photo. This past year I’ve had the opportunity to use my camera as a way to make money and to do photography with an organizational direction, but what I have maintained is that it isn’t just ‘shoot it because you have to’ or ‘because they’re paying you’, but rather, ‘if you have to shoot it, figure out a creative way to do it’.

Personalize it. Make it your own. Tell a story.

Here are some of the stories, photos and take aways from my first year as a ‘photographer’.

My First Photo