My Story, My Photos: Senior Year of High School

Senior year in High School was all about getting my portfolio together for applying to art school. I completely set up my own darkroom in my parent’s basement and spent many days at home developing and printing. I remember the day my mom came to watch and we found an old negative of my dad and printed it just for fun. A lot of the images I used in my portfolio came from a trip to Nassau, Bahamas that my family took with some friends. Needless to say, I didn’t really want to go but bringing my camera was how I planned to make the best of it. At this time I was using my Canon AE-1. I remember my mom having a little trouble carrying one of the bags so I offered to take it from her and gave her my camera bag to hold. She went to one of the other family’s rooms before coming to ours and accidentally left it there. They then gave it to the next employee that passed, thinking it was left by the previous guests (even though it was on the bed which was obviously changed and made since then). It took 3 days and many visits from both my mom and me to the security office before they finally located the employee and my camera. I got it back the morning we docked (it was a cruise) in Nassau. The camera was fine and all the new rolls I bought were still there, but the 3 rolls of film I had forgotten to take out and leave home before we left were GONE (containing photos from NYC and the Central Park Zoo and including one of a bird lady). To this day I have never seen those rolls again. Devastated by the loss, but excited to have my camera back, I wanted to go out and take photos. My mom, also upset about losing my camera (though we both still don’t know why they didn’t call us to see if it was ours first) and knowing how badly I wanted to take new photos, came with me while everyone else went to the beach and played with dolphins. While I know it wasn’t her ideal vacation, I think we both enjoyed it a lot more than we thought. We hopped on a bus and started getting off at random spots to check out the island and its sights. We saw a lot of interesting things including food stands and some very nice people, but the most interesting place was where we found an unfinished church and an old fort. They are still some of my favorite photos to this day. We ended our day at the beach and still got a few hours relaxing in the sun.

Once home, I decided to try to replace the rolls lost by going back to the city and the zoo to see if I could try to recreate at least some of the photos. While I never got another bird lady photo, I did get a lot of really nice photos, maybe better then the first ones, though I will never truly know.

This year I also took a lot of color photos as well as black and whites. I think I had two cameras on me at all times. While my portfolio was only black and whites, I loved capturing some moments in color. Especially while traveling. A lot of my color photos are from trips to college campuses and my family trip to celebrate my graduation (I chose to go to Disney). I still remember visiting the campus (or lack there of) of VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University). I loved every bit of it from the huge black and white darkroom AND the color darkroom to the cobblestone streets and the cute accents. The city was beautiful and I knew it was the right place for me. I applied early admission (which means that if you get accepted you can’t apply anywhere else) and got in! I was the first person in my graduating class to know where they were going and I didn’t have to worry about any other applications or letters in the mail for the rest of high school. It was the first time in my life that I knew what I wanted, went for it and was excited about my future.