Why So Serious (& answers)

Miss Kelsi Rose and I went on an adventure yesterday!  We walked a couple of miles and were screwing around a lot just messing with each other!  It was so much fun and we got A TON of photos!  If only we had someone to follow us around with a video camera for a true behind the scenes video!  Once we got home it was hard to pick which photos we liked best because we had a different memory to go with each one!  It was hard to get her to laugh for me on queue but I was able to pull a trick out of my sleeve to get the job done! ;)

This is probably one of the most public places I've ever taken photos but nobody was there!  There is pretty much anything someone might want to do at a park there, but we were the only ones taking advantage of it which is always nice not to have people around always staring and giving odd remarks. 

Questions and Answers! :)

1. Where do you get a good majority of your inspiration?  Inspiration comes to me in so many different ways.  Music, locations, clothing, TV shows & movies, the looks of the model, and of course the personality of the model.  I never just do something because someone else did it and it looked cool.  When I get ideas at night laying in bed, I always have a notepad and a pen to write it down so I don't forget after sleeping through the night!
2.  Did you take any photographer courses or just learn as you go?  I just learned along the way.  Of course I would read online and ask questions to other photographers that I looked up to and they really seemed to help me which was so kind!  I would love to take classes and go to workshops but I haven't gotten the chance yet.
3.  What kind of camera did you start out with?  I started out with a Pentax K-r.  I still use her, too! Her name is Penny and I feel like she is part of my family because I would never go anywhere without her, and now without her and Mario (Canon 5D Mark II).
4. When did you start photography?  I started in September 2012 (so I have been at it now for 9 months).
5. How did you get started in photography?  Well okay, funny story actually.  When I was in the hospital for a week with a Spinal Cord Stimulator trial my parents would always push me around the hospital garden and I would take pictures on my mom's Nikon J1 and it was a really good distraction for me.  Skip forward a month and I get my first DSLR (no I wasn't into photography at that point I just liked taking pictures of things and of course the One Direction concert I went to) which was a Pentax K-r.  I end up in the hospital in Boston for 6 weeks in an intensive rehabilitation center.  It was absolutely beautiful up in Boston and there was a river right by the hospital and a little walking trail (which I wasn't able to walk on for several weeks) and it was a nice escape from all the stress I was under and all the pain I was in.  Skip forward two months and now I am back home in Missouri and I was falling in love with photography.  It was my only escape from the pain even though I was still in it while shooting, I was happy and distracted and that was a nice change for me.  I took portraits of my friend and to this day they make me CRINGE, just oh my.  My composition and exposure and focus was never right but at the time I didn't know any better and just knew it made me happy.  Now I know it is what I want to do with my life because it is still to this day, my only escape from the pain my disease causes me and I'm improving so much that I know I will be great by the time I am out of high school!  So in a shorter answer, it was a distraction. (but who likes short answers?)