Ever since I was a toddler, I was obsessed with photographs. Yes -- my very first memories were from when I was 2 or 3, and I recall begging my parents to take down a shoebox of pictures which they put away on top of their tall cabinet. When I was 5, I received one of my favorite birthday presents: my parents gave me a red photo album with pictures of me (as a baby) and my family. I still have the album -- it's ratty now, but it's still around. But over the years, I had updated the pictures in it. Not all of them, but a few.

Between then and now, my interest in photography wasn't present but I have always been close to visuals and images. I majored in Graphic Design and focused on that and web design during college. I've had toy cameras as well as fun cameras, but I never owned a SLR. I've used my dad's SLR for projects, but only because I was required to. I've bought point and shoot digital cameras that I used for years just to be able to capture images for my design projects. But for whatever reason, I never thought about taking photography seriously, although it was always there.

I'm not quite sure how I decided on it, but I was talking to a friend about music and photography, and somewhere from that conversation, I wanted my first dSLR. He sold me his, and I slowly picked up how to use it. I stuck with it for 3 years and then I bought a more advanced body as I begin to get more comfortable with my skills for a passion that must have always been inside of me.

It's not about just being artsy or doing it because my friends do it. As I look back at my photograph obsession, I realize that pictures do not have to be perfectly composed or edited for the viewer. Pictures ARE personal -- to the photographer, or the subject. It captures moments in time for us to look back at later on. I realized this when I saw that one of my cousins was tagged (by someone I don't know) in very old pictures from back in the day before I was even born. In the picture, I see my uncle and familiar walls of a very old apartment building that was a part of my childhood. People whose fashions matched what was that of the 70s. I even see a part of my dad's young face, half blocked by someone's head at a party. The colors aren't sharp, neither are the subjects. But each of the photos captured such moments that will never happen again.

As every year passes, every decades close, moments are happening. But cameras are not always available to capture them. Each time there is a camera, capturing the moment WILL mean something later. There are more moments to be experienced than there will ever be cameras or photographers in our lifetime.

So with that said, I hope that photographers continue to work with each other and not feel there's nothing for you to photograph. There is something to be captured wherever you are, whenever you have a camera. I can't always carry my dSLR with me, but I have a fancy phone with a very sophisticated camera. I make sure that it's always available for times I need to capture something. A picture, to me, really doesn't need to be snapped from the latest model. a