Photography is a big part of Streets & Stripes. I’m a full time freelance photographer and love being able to incorporate what I do here on the blog with creating unique, orignal content for you.  I get a lot of emails with questions about photography, from technical questions, to questions of how I got started, and because people seem to be interested, I’d like to share some of what I know!

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This new series will address everything from lighting, to composition, editing, lingo, equipment and more. It will stay on the simplistic side (since I’m not interested in designing a full-fledge course) but hopefully you’ll be able to learn something new and improve your own photography. But for now I’d like to share with you about how I got into photography.

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It’s actually a pretty accidental beginning! About 5 years ago in 2008 (around the same time I started Streets & Stripes) I had a friend in college named Sarah. And Sarah had this camera…a Canon Rebel XSI. Not the most impressive camera from a professional point of view, but the sound of the shutter had me hooked. Later that year my parents gave me a Canon Rebel XSI for an upcoming trip to Israel I was taking with my college class. From there it was no looking back. On my trip I took on average 1,500 photos a day. In 2009 I booked my first wedding. I shot it for $300 and it was a complete learning experience. I was smitten. The next year I was shooting more portraits and more weddings while I still working on completing my degree.

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I had tossed around the idea of transferring to an art school, but after recovering from the shock of the price of tuition at U of Arts in downtown Philadelphia, I decided to stay where I was and finish my degree since I was already booking paid shoots already.

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Streets & Stripes has given me the opportunity to produce new images and content each week. I think this blog has been instrumental in my journey as a photographer. Just promise me you won’t go back and look at all the old posts circa 2008 ;P Those are buried in the archives for a reason, ha!

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So tell me, how did you get into photography? Why are you interested in photography?

Photography by Chaucee Stillman
Words by Chaucee Stillman
First published on www.streetsandstripes.com