I could go into how art changes, because you change for a variety of reasons, and you change based on the experiences you encounter, which changes the way you see and do things like art... But I already did, so it's too late for that. Needless to say, I think my art has changed pretty drastically since I started doing photography. This year will be nine years. Pardon me while I take a moment of disbelief.
In these nine years, I have had many experiences with photography and many changes of direction with where I wanted to go with photography. I've gone from animal photographer to wedding photographer to conceptual photographer to documentary photographer. I have come to learn that not only do I love many different types of photography, but I also don't have to restrict myself to one niche. I have a specialty when it comes to being a professional photographer, and that specialty is documenting people, but simply making photographs for the sake of loving it doesn't mean I have to stick to the niche I specialize in all the time.
With that being said, I want to take you through the nine years of being a photographer and how each year was different from the next.
First up: 2015
September 2015
I had just gotten my first camera from my parents. A Canon Rebel T5i. I took it everywhere with me. I used to live across the street from a cemetery and this is where I mostly practiced my photography at first, taking photos of all of the still life in the cemetery. I didn't have any editing experience, so I was simply shooting what I saw.
Next: 2016
October 2016
Still practicing in the cemetery, I had started playing around with depth of field before I truly understood how it technically worked. This was the year I second shot my first wedding. I was sixteen and the photographer I second shot for was super great with teaching me and she was very nice to work with. No, unfortunately, I don't remember what her name was and no, I can't show any images from it. Sorry guys. This was also the year I started thinking about wedding photography.
Next: 2017
September 2017
October 2017
Ah, my first year of college. I majored in fine art photography with hopes of becoming a fine art wedding photographer. I took a Photography 101 class and a Film 101 class during my freshman year. Funny enough, my now husband and I took the Photography 101 class together because he was minoring in forensic photography at the time. I learned that I loved using film cameras, but I hated developing and printing film. I think I just angered many photographers with that sentence. "But, don't you love how hands-on it is??". Yes, but as someone with astigmatism who already has a hard time seeing in the dark, trying to focus with an enlarger just under a red light is not my cup of anything. Pardon my complaining.
Next: 2018
October 2018
This year I took an advanced digital photography class and I was starting to lean more towards conceptual photography. I had started watching a lot of other photographers online like Brandon Woelfel and Irene Rudnyk making these amazing fine art portraits and I thought to myself, "I could totally do that". I also took a historical photography class where we made cyanotypes, van dykes, and gum bichromate photographs, and it is still one of the best photography classes I have ever taken. I loved it so much.
Next: …2019
May 25th, 2019
The year my dad died. I did an internship with a wonderful wedding photographer and was bouncing back and forth between Albany and Syracuse to help my mom take care of my dad. I was second-shooting a wedding, and I caught an image of the flower girl right as she turned and looked at me. A chance photograph. It's still one of my favorite images (I hope I can show you sometime). At that moment, I knew I had found the form of photography that spoke to me the most. I didn't know what it was called until I took photographs of my dad while he was in hospice on the day he died. During the most horrible year of my life, I learned that documentary photography was what I wanted to do. Sometimes, the worst things teach us things about ourselves we didn't know.
Next: 2020
January 2020. Still, I think, one of the best shots I have ever taken.
September 2020
Studying photography in the confines of an apartment during a pandemic proved to be very difficult as I had just learned that I wanted to be a documentary photographer. I got married during the summer in a teenie-tiny COVID wedding and then jumped right into starting my Capstone thesis. The pandemic also made starting my thesis very difficult as I, a person with some comorbidities, had originally planned to interview and photograph other people in a studio space where we couldn't be six feet apart. Thankfully, given my history, I'm pretty accustomed to change.
Next: 2021
February 2021. The OGs know this one.
March 2021
I graduated with my BFA in Fine Art Photography during a highly charged political climate and I started learning what it meant to document and how to tell a story. During this year, I also started podcasting with my mom (Under The Sun And Moon) and I jumped head first into being a small business owner as a photographer. I did all the social media things and did the weird TikTok trends and, sure enough, it started getting me somewhere.
Next: 2022
September 2022
I experimented a lot with self-portraiture in 2022. I had opened the Under The Sun And Moon store with my mom and my husband, and I was doing pretty well with shoots and photography. Certainly not bad for the first year of really being in business. However, in May 2022, I got COVID and it threw my health a really bad curveball.
Next: 2023. The next worst year next to 2019.
September 2023
I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome in February of 2023. I had been having some questions about my health for years, but when I got COVID in May of 2022, everything bubbled to the surface. Most of 2023 was spent doing bloodwork, scans, doctor's appointments, having serious health anxiety, and putting my body back together. Almost everything I knew about my body and my mental health before had changed, thankfully for the better after I started understanding what was going on with my health. However, photography and working in our store took a very big back seat. We had also just moved into a new storefront as all of this was going on. Self-portraiture became my way of documenting myself and the experiences I was having, but I didn't do very much photography of any kind in 2023. I started grad school a few days after this image was taken, and grad school has been a huge lifesaver for me.
Next: 2024
It's too early to post any defining images as the year has just started. Besides, who knows what may change about my photography this year. All of the changes my photography and I have been through were necessary and my art has changed with me. Surely, we'll change again. But for now, in 2024, we're still figuring it out. I hope you stick around to see what changes.
-Kes