When I moved to California, I made three big purchases that I knew would pay off in the long run: a mountain bike for trail riding, a new acoustic guitar since I had to leave my old one in Chicago, and a Nikon D3500 DSLR camera because I knew if I was going to be visiting such beautiful places I might as well capture some beautiful photos of them.
And I've put that camera to good use. It is by my side for every National Park and scenic hike and exciting corner of the Bay Area I go to, ready to be whipped out at a moment's notice whenever the sun is shining in a cool way or the fog is rolling in just right. For the first few months, I would have never categorized myself as a "photographer"; it was more just me pointing and clicking at a lot of things and hoping what came out was passable. But after a few months of poking around the camera settings and experimenting with different editing techniques, I slowly began to feel more comfortable using the term self-referentially. I am a photographer.
Because this is what I realized: anyone can point their camera at a pretty sight and take a pretty picture. That doesn't make you a photographer; it just makes you an Instagram user wealthy enough to afford an iPhone 13 Pro. The moment I started considering myself a photographer was when I started asking myself two questions...
How can I take this boring thing and make it interesting?
How can I take this interesting thing and look at it in a new way?
I am by no means an expert in color grading nor do I have an exhaustive knowledge of f-stops or camera lenses, but I feel like once you start asking yourself these questions, you've sort of cracked open the craft. You've opened your mind to what photography actually is, and as long as you understand that, then the skills will follow shortly after.
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