Photographs.

I love to take pictures. if someone asked me what my passion is, i would say photography. I took up photography when i was in the 9th grade, on a whim, when i needed an elective to take sophomore year. i was going to take journalism, but i wanted to get out of class one day, so i walked down to my guidance counselor and changed to photo-journalism. taking pictures after that began as something to do that was different. i have a rebellious subconscious. on the surface, i like to go with the flow, but underneath, i have an innate need to stand out, do something that most people dont do. no other guy at school took pictures, so i'd be "that" guy. alot of times, people want to be "that" guy, but only for the right reasons. they want to be "that" person with the nice car, or "that" person who always gets good grades. it'd suck to have a bad "that" though, like "that" guy who peed his pants junior year, but i digress. i've always tried to figure out why i chose photography to be different, instead of, well, anything else. i like photography because it captures that one single moment, forever, and as corny as it sounds, nothing can diminish that one moment, that one memory, which is now set forever. a picture is one of the art forms that can lie. a person can be smiling and happy in a picture, but be sad and lonely on the inside. camera's capture the superficial, and alot of times, thats what people want to see. if only a camera could capture what the moment felt like, what was in the air at that split second someone closed the shutter, see inside that person to see if they were lying to themselves, like a lot of us do. i hate to think of how photography would change if the human condition was imprinted on a piece of kodak 8x11 glossy printer paper.