Getting Stated

For the past 5 years I’ve been working as a freelance photographer in Austin, Tx shooting everything from weddings and events to corporate head shots. The industry has it’s ups and downs like everything else but all that aside I love post-production. When I get to sit in front of my computer, turn off my phone, put on some music and get into the creative flow is why I love photography. While I’m shooting I can already envision what I want the image to look like and how I’m going to do it. Import to Lightroom, sort through the negatives, adjust noise and sharpening first, batch sync, narrow down images, adjust color and brightness, add graduated filter, remove spots, export image, import image to photoshop, clean up subject and background. Export final image. Stare and marvel at the original and final image.

It’s a rush for me to be able to sit down and take an empty canvas and create an idea from scratch.

I’ve always been interested computers, programs, and the internet since I got my first computer when I was a kid. My dad had never had a computer either and was all about the manual but for me I just want to tinker with it and see what it can do. I’m 29 and growing up the computer became a staple in education and life in general. I used it in college to study and play video games but never got much further into understand the computer language.

It wasn’t until after college when my old roommate told me he made the switch to programming and that I should take a look into it. Well being 3 years into photography and barely making enough to get by, I saw the price tag and time required to get into programming and was immediately turned off.

A couple years later (last November) I took a job working for a Video Production company based in California which I could do from Austin. I thought this job was it and was so excited. Finally after struggling for 4 years I was finally working for a company with a consistent paycheck doing what I loved, overseeing creative projects. WRONG! Turns out I was actually a traveling salesman running from meeting to meeting, stressed out to make a quota, not caring about projects I had sold, and away from my family 3 weeks a month. I hated waking up and going to meetings. This just wasn’t for me. I wasn’t creating anything.

After 9 months I stopped. I didn’t know what to do. One thing I knew for sure was that I did not want to get another job like that again just to get a job. My girlfriend asked me “What about photography makes you love it so much?” and it took me a couple weeks to narrow it down but in the end I realized what it was. I enjoyed the post-production creative process. Using computer programs and websites to build a photo. That’s when I remembered my friend.

I started doing more research and found another college friend who went to a coding bootcamp in Atlanta. I started talking with him more about his experience and did more digging online. I decided to keep working on photography but to study on my own for a month to see if this is something I could actually pursue.

After the first month, all I wanted was more. More information, more challenges, more understanding. I decided I was going to make the switch and a bootcamp would be the best way for me to jump in and get a solid foundation.

I decided on the Iron Yard and am excited to start in less than a month. I’ve been studying for about 3–4 hours each day to prepare and looking forward to diving deeper into concepts that I’m not so familiar with.

Skills I want to take away from this experience are:

• Having a solid understanding of Javascript and front-end practices
• Being able to think like a programmer to develop apps that are meaningful and useful
• Learn how to learn

I’ve never been much of a writer before but maybe now I can use it as just one more skill to learn.