Where I was

In 2004 I was a student at BYU studying Languages, i had been at school for about 2 years straight. (1 previously)
Someone told me about a work abroad project. Sounded less expensive than study or travel abroad…

Europe

I went to Europe for 3 months. 2 of which to work at a Supermarket in Belgium to enhance my French.

Before I left I bought a small point and click digital.
It was my first digital and it was all of 4mp – but heh I was shooting it at 1mp because i could fit more pictures that way on my only 256mb card

On my days off from the supermarket I would travel around Belgium and even to Germany and France.
When I went with other people they would frequently say “Why bring our cameras, scott takes a ton and his are great”
This is the ego boost that stirred me to take more and more.

I think I realized just how addicted to taking pictures I had become when I was in Brugge, Belgium one of the most picturesque and famous towns of Belgium and was having so much fun.
But then my double AA batteries died and bam… I wasn’t having fun anymore. I couldn’t just walk around and enjoy it… I wanted to be preserving what I saw
This is probably because I have a horendous memory and I knew it would all be gone in just a month.
I went and bough extra batteries and bam… I was in business again!

I came home from Europe, printed up some of those pictures and put them on my wall, I was proud of myself.

Then the camera broke.

Impulsive Buyer

Not long after there was a snowstorm… one of those that coats everything in an amazing layer of pure white snow.
I was at work (wells fargo) and it killed me to not be out taking pictures of it. (But I had no camera)

I went to the mall (not sure why) and I visited the camera shop.
I met Gordan (whom I’m still friends with to this day) and we looked at small cameras.

Just for the heck of it I looked at the big cameras (A nikon D70)
I didn’t have the money for it but I really thought it would be fun.

So yeah you guessed it, I walked out the door with a DSLR

“Sure Why Not”

One of my close friends in the apartment complex where I lived saw I had one of them big “pro” cameras and she saw my pictures from Europe on the wall and I guess she decided that was good enough for her.
So she asked me to take some engagement pictures.

My answer is classic: “Sure Why Not” I continued “If they suck you can always get a real photographer to take them”

I didn’t know what engagement pictures looked like, heck i hadn’t even recieved many wedding announcements. I peeked online to see what they were like.
But pretty much I winged it and we had fun, and they bought me dinner afterwards. (This ain’t small fries for a poor student)

I didn’t buy this camera to take pictures of people, but that’s what I ended up doing.

Well you can probably guess that the engagement shoot went well, and then they asked me if I’d do their wedding in Washington.
They’d pay for flight and I’d take pictures. “Sure Why Not”
I knew you couldn’t just redo them… but I felt pretty confident already.
I thank my ignorance for helping me jump right into wedding photography.
But I was also resourceful and very techy. I could certainly figure out all those pesky buttons, because I love buttons and I would fake the rest.
Plus since I was doing this for cheap and they had petitioned me I felt there wasn’t an expectation to be the most amazing photographer in the world.

Snowball

Well it was around that time that other people in the apartment complex heard that I had taken Megan and Drew’s pictures and that I was gonna do their wedding.
So they asked me if I’d do theirs. I didn’t have a price, so quickly I made one.
$300-400 seemed like a fortune to me for one days work (More than I made as a part time employee at the bank in a whole week)

They were sold on the idea.
In fact I did 2 other weddings before I even got to do the wedding in Washington.
I was well on my way to being famous… haha

I got the calling of photographer at church (because I kind of mentioned to them that i REALLY liked photography)

I moved to another area and my new Bishop felt inspired to once again to give me a calling of being the photographer again.
That little student church ward is where things really started to pick up.
I had tons of opportunities to take pictures, and there were also tons of people meeting eachother and getting married.

It was there I decided that I could make more money doing a wedding every so often than working at the bank.

Europe again

I joined a BYU group in 2006 to Europe. I went for 3 months and had my own car the whole time.
I picked it up from the leasing agency with 7KM on it and brought it back with 21,000 KMs
And with a stack of 100DVDs totalling over 60,000 pictures
Compare that to when i went in 2004 with only 3,000 pictures to show and such low resolution that they could easily all fit on one DVD

I got very taken with the concept of documentive photography and started there plotting my ideas about what would become my life long project Explore The World Foundation and the Envision the World Project

Wedding Photographer

I had missed the summer wedding season being in Europe all summer long of 2006.
I was able to do a few later in the year.
I was now done with school (Last semester was the one before I went to Europe 06)
I was getting into editing I progressed from nothing, to photoshop elements, to photoshop, to camera raw in photoshop, then eventually Lightroom Beta came out, then Lightroom 1 and then about a year ago Lightroom 2 and now they’re moving on to lightroom 3

In 2007  things started to pick up. I probably did over a dozen weddings
2008 I was starting to do weddings for people I didn’t even know.
I wasn’t just full time like I was in 2007 but I was full time and busy.
I did about 32 weddings in 2008 and I was traveling around.

Now I’m known primarily as a wedding photographer. I enjoy it and it’s a great solid living.
Prices are a bit higher than when I started, but so is the quality.
And now I’m trying to focus on providing more quality to each wedding and not doing quite as many as I’ve done in the past (some cases 10-12 in a single month)

Now days

Well now I’m trying to cut down on weddings a bit to be able to find some free time for some of my other projects.
I love doing weddings and doubt I’ll stop anytime soon.

Help others get it done faster

I taught myself over the course of several years.
I put in crazy amounts of time and learned from countless trial and error how to take good pictures.
I enjoyed figuring out the technical side and I constantly judged people’s reactions to my pictures to understand what good pictures were.

I think the crazy amount of time I put into photography (as a single college student who was in a perfect position to invest said time)
it’s a primary motivating factor why I’m so compelled and willing to teach and share with others.
Because though I know that if they want it bad enough they’ll learn it all in time.
But why not be a help. Speed up that process a little. Take all that tons of time i had invested into learning from scratch and recap it all in a few phrases or a day of help.

Speed them forward a few months with just some of the tips and tricks and understand I had developed.
It’s not that people can’t learn this on their own… It’s that we as pros can help them to get up to speed faster.

A perfect example of this is Suzanne who I met October 2008
She was destined to be a great photographer no matter what, she was dedicated and naturally talented.

Just one year later she’s a very busy photographer, with amazing work.
I’d like to think that I had a big part in helping her to get up to speed.
It wasn’t long after meeting and becoming great friends that she was flying on her own… but I shared as much as I could in a short compact amount of time and she took the info and figured out her own niche and style.

Yes it makes me jealous that she was able to do in less than a year what took me 3 years on my own. But it’s a testament what you can do with the help of others (and I certainly wasn’t the only one helping out suzanne)

Classes and Workshops

I’d like to think I do editing (lightroom) classes and photography workshops simply for pure unselfish reasons… but it is a great boost to the ego.
But a lot of it is from the motivation to spare people to have to spend the excesive amounts of time I’ve already put into learning it from scratch.

The teacher inside of me really enjoys it.
I tried teaching at an actual school. But I decided I needed more mature and motivated students than 7th and 8th graders. Bless the soul of any public or private school teacher, I say.

The Future

The future will be filled with continued learning on my part, in an attempt to stay ahead of the game.
Continued teaching.

And a whole lot of photography projects.
When I grow up I’ll primarily be working with the Explore the World Foundation and bringing people valuable cultural education through my pride and joy the Envision the World Project.

I’d like to think that past feeding myself and putting a roof over my head that killing myself with constant 12-15hr days is an attempt to get to the place financially to be able to invest more time and money into these projects.
I’m not really motivated by money itself, but helping others and educating is something I really get into.

Specially when it involves my passions, Travel, Languages, Education and of course Photography