It is no more a secret… :: PYKtures Stories

For the past few years, I’ve been talking passionately about it and it seems the passion or addiction was strong enough to influence most of the other things in my life. My flickr gallery is composed of more than 20 000 shots; pictures kept out of more than 190 000 shutter actuations… My last semester in IT engineering went from hopeful to painful to disastrous. It seemed clear now that I was due for a change. It is no more a secret… I live for photography.


It seems strange, even freaking to think about making a hobby into a study or even a job. I was raised to separate the fun things from the hard things: fun leads you to nothing while hard work leads you to success. My parents introduced me sports, travels, cinematography and photography while I discovered Dragon ball, mangas, videogames, Japanese animations, movies and Star Trek. All of these seem to be areas where I have the most fun. Yet there was always this gap of fun vs. not fun I felt between hobbies and school homework.



Heck even during my high school years, I was drawing comic books, writing stories in secret (well okay writing poems and reading them to the girls I have a crush on and getting rejected isn’t so secret). I’d also go through countless J-RPGs on Playstation because I loved the stories. Because I was taught common knowledge in class, the gap between hobbies and schoolwork still remained. During the last years of high school (or surviving enriched science learning program), I met some friends that were into cinematography (at that time regarded as geeks by the school bullies and the hot girls). Together as a trinity of talents, we produced our own movies. During the summer, I continued using my creativity by leading children to epic adventures at summer camp. The hobby side of me was taking over. At that time, I wanted to become a videogame director or interactive storyteller. Applied science really wasn’t my thing…



When it came to apply to CEGEP, I chose to pursue multimedia to gain the tools to create the things I enjoy: videogames and movies. I’ve enjoyed every single class that involved anything visual, as they were related studies to my hobby: Photoshop, illustrator, page design, interface design, video editing, video post-processing, 3d modeling, 3d animation. Those were areas where I shined: the visual arts. I was also forced to embrace programming and other classes I didn’t like. There, my hobby became my field of study and it was amazing. Unfortunately, my other classes suffered and I had to stay extra years to finish them. It is in those times of boredom that I discovered photography as a hobby.



Where as photography at the time was mostly about the shooting, cinematography is also a longer process: scripting, planning, shooting (many takes), editing and publishing. I loved cinematography but I realized that my photography direction lacked shine especially right after I saw the movie Cashback where the director used the power of photography to make a bare supermarket interesting.



It was a time when dSLRs became affordable. Seeing more and more people using those machines led me to save up money and sharpen my skills (using a canon point and shoot camera) for a Nikon D80.



Photography became an obsession. My dad and my neighbor happened to be Nikon users. Thus, I was always borrowing their gear. Which each new lens laid a new challenge to understand and master. The lens system I had access was limitless in potential. Being very passionate about the art (you might have noticed that already with this bIog), I’ve also shared my passion to the photographers who answered my call. In a matter of weeks, I discovered social media (Facebook, Deviantart) and built a growing contact list of friends I made through photography. I was so addicted to it that I gave more attention to it than my own work (in web design at the time). Eventually, I was forced to quit my job.



Blaming my hobby to be the culprit of my main demise, I wished to shut myself from it in pursuit of a stable career. Seeing how other professional photographers I know suffer in the field, I was very afraid to throw away my life at the time in pursuit in the career I thought of embracing. Following some peer pressure, I then applied to ETS in IT engineering. The first semester seemed interesting and for most of the specialized classes, it was very interesting. I tried to stop shooting for a while but the will was always there, hunting me. Instead of taking pictures, I was networking with photographers in social media sites. I then succumbed into photo outings organized by my photography friends and drifted towards the passion once again. My marks suffered and I was forced to quit studying engineering.



Fate as it seems found a way to flunk me out of two promising career choices to make me realize a lesson: photography is my true calling. It’s true when I realize it: posting more than 19 000 shots and taking more than 190 000 actuations during the past 2 years; lightroom processing at 70-100 shots per hour (not kidding), being good enough to borrow photography gear from my friends and use/test them, getting praised, getting asked to take pictures, reaching more and more people, making new exciting friends all the time.



It is no more a secret; I plan to become a successful professional photographer. I truly believe to have the skill set and the friends that will make my dreams come true. So, may the world witness my expansion! I will enjoy it to the max!