IT ALL STARTS WITH A SMALL STEP…..TAKE THE STEP
This was one of my first steps……..
Back in 2008, I made a decision to “own” my passion for photography. Prior to that year, I had dabbled in it, but never fully embraced it. Why hadn’t I embraced it up to that point? Was it fear, lack of focus, etc. There were probably a lot of “Why’s”, or reasons that I hadn’t, and those are important things to consider. However, what was more significant, was a “growing intuition” towards my love for photography.
What do I mean by “growing intuition”?
I had started looking at peoples pics on a Flickr, a well-known photo share site. As time went on, I got more and more inspired by the work that was showing up on this site. At one point, I stumbled upon some pics of incense smoke. I saw how people colored them, mirrored, and even learned how people photographed them. I picked up a copy of a magazine called digital photography, and saw an actual tutorial on how to photograph smoke, as well as post process it.
Well, from this point on, I became a mad scientist, lol. I spent the next few days and weeks photographing smoke. It wasn’t long before I had thousands of shots at my disposal. I started to upload the ones I liked to Flickr, and I even shared them with smoke art groups around the site. My passion for it started to grow, and the images literally started to pour out of me.
While the feeling of passion grew, I also started to notice how the universe was conspiring with me. In the next few weeks, I had two news services contact me, regarding an interview and possible article about my smoke work. After my interview, two publications, The Daily Telegraph, and the BBC of Brasil, published an article about my work on the net. As a result of the articles, my Flickr site rec’d over 20,000 hits in just two days!! Things were moving along quite rapidly, but strangely, with effortless effort. By the way, this is how you know that something is a true passion. Wink wink.
To this day, more and more remarkable photographic opportunities have come my way, and my love and passion for photography continues to grow. I’m truly grateful for this gift.
“Pay attention to your intuition….and take that first step!
Love, Will