How I became a photographer.
I have been interested in photography and images since I discovered my grandparent’s collection of National Geographic and LIFE magazines when I was a little kid. My mother bought me an instant camera on my 12th birthday and that set me off on a strange and complicated odyssey. I literally carried that camera everywhere, carefully selecting each subject so as not to exceed my weekly film allowance. Life is never a straight line and eventually I discovered computer graphics, spending many late, adolescent nights programming my Commodore 64, when I should have been studying my high school trigonometry. At one point, I got it in my head that I wanted to work with lasers - yes lasers - doing research for the US Navy.
Fortunately, life had different plans for me, and once I got to university, it dawned on me that computer science classes were full of nerds. I soon discovered I was much more interested in classes that included women, go figure. Anyway, long story short, I ended up in Fine Arts studying Graphic Design.
I was also fortunate to find my dear mentor and professor, Karen Nulf. I met Karen for the first time when I took her Graphic Design 101 class. She has a wonderful gift for communication and after a few weeks in her class, she pulled me aside and asked if I had declared my major yet. I hadn’t, so she took that opportunity to convince me to focus on design and fine art. I am really happy she did, because it got me back to re-discovering my passion for making images.
Thanks to Karen, I had a great career in graphic design. I worked in Chicago for twelve years and my computer skills got me a lot of retouching and compositing work, which put me in touch with some great photographers. I would often get to participate in shoots and learn about lighting and how to work with models, it was absolutely inspiring.
I left Chicago in August of 2000 to take a job as a creative director for an online design agency based in Switzerland. Moving to Switzerland was a daunting task, it is a very different culture here, compared to the U.S., but it was the opportunity of a lifetime, so I took it.
Before I left the U.S.A., I also bought my first digital camera and what a revelation that was. Living in the heart of Europe allowed me to travel a lot, and I took my camera every time. More importantly, I came to realize that I was a pretty good photographer.
After working a couple of years, I started to become aware that I was turning into more of a manager in my work and less of a creative. This revelation sent chills up my spine. I realized that I needed a change. Fortunately, around that same time, someone I knew approached me about helping out with a new magazine project. I decided to take a chance and became the lead photographer and photography editor for the magazine.
Though I was never paid for my work and the magazine eventually went out of business, it gave me some confidence to take photography more seriously. I took some workshops, did a lot of self-study and I started getting paid assignments. In 2003, I setup my own studio to focus on photography full-time.
Photography has let me bring my ideas to life in a direct and real way. It’s funny that I did something very similar all those years as a designer, but I never had half the passion as I do for photography. If I can offer one piece of advice, if you ever discover that you really love doing something, then do it, the rest will work itself out
Thanks for reading,
Bryon