36 New Photos

I had been interested in photography for maybe a year when this was shot. It was made with my dad's Pentax K1000. The venue is the old Muse Music, back when a single indie venue was good enough for Provo. The girl in the image was a high school friend, Caitlin Bahr. She was the only good looking member, and the bassist of her brother's ska band, Radical Millhouse.

My high school experience had lots of ups and downs, but one thing that I always looked forward to was taking pictures. This photo sticks out to me because I remember this photo as one of the first times I felt like I had taken a really great photo.

This really good photo gave me a sense of pride like I hadn't felt before.

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My sister once asked me what about the photographic process I liked the most. I had a hard time answering the question, initially I found myself unable to pick out one particular thing. The question stayed with me though, and I ended up putting a lot of thought to it.

I like that photography takes me places I wouldn't normally go. I like saying "What if?" to myself 100 times a day. What if I did this? What if she looked at me like that? What if we went here and she posed like this. What if I photographed those guys, I wonder what they're like?

I like the technology part of photography too. I like checking camera firmware versions and updating to a new release candidate of LightRoom and uploading photos to WordPress and formatting blog posts.

Perhaps what I like most about photography is the feeling of making a really great photo. I like being put in a situation and saying "How can I make this a fun or interesting or thoughtful image?"

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This negative was hand developed in Mr. Halverson's photo class. I remember how boring that class was. (He always put on that movie about Ansel Adams, you know the one.) But the boredom that VHS-assisted learning wrought was always worth it. The periods we got to spend in the darkroom were what I lived for. Those were the days that I got to see if my 36 new photos were any good.