Minolta Maxxam 7000 | NESI Photography

Hello! Welcome to my blog.

I'd like to start this series off with a bit of background information on myself.

I am a second year photography student in the photographic technology program at NAIT and I am having a blast. Since around 2007, I have been interested in having a career in photography. It all started with a little Minolta Maxxam 7000. I found it amongst my dad's may electronic paraphernalia. This was probably one of the best things I had come across out of all of his things. I had already owned a digital Kodak, but the Minolta was a professional SRL film camera that came with a line up lenses and flashes. This camera became attached to me and I found myself sharing my favorite images off the latest roll with my family and friends. They began encouraging me to pursue photography as a career.

In 2009 I carefully selected my high school based on the quality of it’s photography class. As soon as classes began it was apparent that I would greatly benefit from buying a current DSLR. My dad then bought me my first camera, the Canon 60D, in 2010. Ever since then I took every opportunity to further my photography skills. I started the photography club in my high school and I was asked to display my work in the school’s book loft. (Where it stayed until earlier this year when they began renovations). The schools athletic program began interviewing students to be hired on as paid sports photographers for the school. After I was hired, I attended almost every football and basketball game for 2 years while I gained important experience in photography.

After completing high school a semester early, I spent those extra 4 months building my portfolio and applying to university. I decided that I wanted to supplement my university career before going into photography. I took two years to study courses that I was interested in and improve upon myself.

Some of the more enjoyable classes I took included:

Drama History: As part of the curriculum I went to 4 plays and then wrote a paper on it. I’m a bit of a nerd because I REALLY love writing papers.

Music Theory and History: I went to 2 symphonies’ and studies many compositions from pretty much every period in history. I can identify at least 30 songs based on 4 bars of music. (Don’t test me on that….haha).

Anthropology: I took the class focused on sex and gender in which I learned so much more than I could have ever imagined existed. The phrase “You don’t know what you don’t know until you know it” could have never been more true for that whole class.

Other classes included a nutrition and health class, and Greek and Roman Mythology.

Then a little over 2 years ago I applied to NAIT, got accepted and here I am, almost graduated.

"Trust Thyself" - Ralph Waldo Emerson