Photo Credit. Geoffrey Stephens, 2006
I first picked up a film camera when I was 11. I found it in the back of a closet in my parent's house. To this day, I'm not sure who's camera it was or what happened to it. My experience with it was fleeting. I walked around for a day or so, acting like a photographer. There was no film in it, so I didn't get the chance to shoot anything. But it felt powerful in my hands...like a weapon of sorts.
Soon, my 11 year old, A.D.D. mind moved onto other interests and I didn't become reacquainted with a camera until a trip to Paris and Amsterdam some 15 years later. I felt like I was 11 again. I wondered what had happened in those 15 years? Why had I never pursued this special interest?
Something happens when you travel to a place you've never been, a culture you've never experienced. It can turn the most amateur photographer into a professional documentarian. You see things in a different way. The most minor, mundane details of a native's life has the ability to change yours forever.
It's this mindset that has changed me forever, and something that I strive to capture everyday.
