Growing up, photography was a BIG part of my family. Not that I come from a streamline of professional photographers, but better yet, a trigger-happy mom who LOVED scrapbooking. Seriously an emphasis on LOVED. (hahaha)
At the moment, I never thought much of it. Still, I remember using disposable cameras to capture everything from our birthdays, dance recitals, holidays, vacations, and Mondays... Tuesdays... Wednesdays.. and almost any day that ended in Y. We say my brother and I were my mother's "favorite" photo subjects… or most available, haha. I vaguely remember her transition to a film camera but clearly remember fidgeting with the containers that the rolls of film came in and our trips to the local stores to get the photos developed. She was a hardcore scrapbooker and had scissors with every perforated edge you could think of, glitter pens of all colors, craft paper, and hole punchers of all different shapes, and would even make her own scrapbooks by using a 3-ring binder and covering the outside with fabric from our local art supply store.
When I was ~12 years old, I started grabbing the camera occasionally and would snap away for fun. I remember starting to take photos of my family and cousins with little to no care about what the images looked like until my mom would review the pictures and have me redo them after telling me that I needed to pay attention to the framing of my photos and be mindful of the items captured in them, to center the subject, to pay attention to lighting and shadows, and to make sure at all costs — the subjects were SMILING!! (this is more of an inside joke bc getting my brother and me to smile for photos as a kid was like pulling teeth; where we would respond by doing the most prominent and most complex smile you could think of that honestly wasn't very appealing, but hey— we smiled!! hahaha.)
In 8th grade, I took a class with a teacher who happened to be in charge of the yearbook club, and I would watch him put together the yearbook when I finished my classwork. I joined and became club president & represented us for homecoming that year. Yearbook club reminded me of my mom's scrapbooking but on a digital platform. I had an eye for design nurtured by watching my mom scrapbook. I learned the do's and don'ts of cramming items, spacing items, learning to be mindful of the colors in the photos to those in the backgrounds, and choosing fonts that were legible & stood out.
When I started high school, I joined the softball team and put my interest in media on the back burner. Thankfully, social media was in full swing, so I was able express myself creatively through our mobile cameras and began downloading apps to test out their editing software and find ways to "photoshop" without having access to the actual program itself. I found ways to execute the ideas I had in mind by using multiple secondary applications to create my desired image styles. When I was 14, I started doing my friend's hair and makeup for their quinceaneras (a traditional Mexican 15th birthday celebration). I remember my mom told me to take pictures of the makeup and hairstyles so I could use them as a reference for the future. The camera was back in my hands, and not only did my friends like getting made up, but I learned they loved having camera-quality photos taken of them too! I then began taking pictures of my friends where we would create the most elaborate scenarios and photograph them as if they were "on a runway" or "in a wedding magazine" haha.
