It all started after my grandmothers died in 2006, both my mother's and my father's mothers died within 2 months of each other. I began going back over photos I had, remembering all the times we had together and realized how much things had changed since I was young. I also started to realize how much had happened that I had nothing more than my own memory of: nothing to show my kids, no photos, nothing. I got very sad and decided that I would document each holiday, event, game, each everything from that point on so that when my kids grow old, they have photos to look at and pass on. While I took a lot of photos they weren't always great and I wasn't sure what to do to make them turn out better until I started working on my first Master's Degree.
For this degree I had to take several directed and applied classes in art, each of which was of my choosing. At this point I bit the bullet, bought a DSLR, and took a couple of photography classes. I learned how to use the manual setting for my camera, how to focus manually, how to create HDR photography, how to build great panoramic images, and so much more.
I became a picture taking machine, but I wasn't just taking pictures, I began to take meaningful photos; photos that evoked a feeling, emotion, or memory. Like I said, every photo tells a story, and I have books of stories and now it is time for me to open them up to the world and share my stories with everyone.