photoEdge: A History (Part 1)

It dawned on me the other day that many of you might not know the history behind photoEdge. So, I'm going to give it to you. Seeing as history class was never my favorite, I'll try to make this interesting for you. To really know the history of photoEdge you must first know the history of Dave and myself. If you've read some of our older posts, this might be a slight recap for you.

We'll start with me. I have an extremely close-knit family with 2 sisters: one older and one younger.

 My family has always been big on going on vacations. Here is where my interest in photography began. My parents had a very old point-and-shoot camera they would let us girls play with on vacations. I loved it!


That's me in the yellow pants on the left picture. I'm the one in the back right in the other one.

As I got older, I got my first personal point-and-shoot camera to take with me on vacation. In the fall of my 8th grade year, my mom's dad passed away. Since my interest in photography had already started, my grandmother gave me his Canon AE-1. At this point I started to think about what a career in photography would look like.

In highschool, I started researching photography as a career. I decided I wanted to be the Still Photographer on a movie set. How cool would that be?!? My junior year I took my high schools photography class with Mr. Pascolla. The very first day of class we watched an intro to photography video put out by Brooks Institute of Photography. It was quite a few years old, but the content was still very relevant. At that point I decided not only did I want to be the still photographer on a movie set, but I also wanted to go to Brooks. No questions asked. Until I found out the cost!

During the end of my junior/beginning of my senior year, I started touring schools and applying for colleges. I picked out my top 2: Brooks and CSU Sacramento. During the fall of 2002 (I think) Brooks called me to let me know about a perspective student day. My mom, dad and I drove down to check it out. I was in love. The campus is a gorgeous stone house that has been converted. It's set in the "mountains" of Montecito overlooking Santa Barbara and the Channel Islands. Absolutely gorgeous.



At the end of the day my dad said "Well, it sounds like if you want to be a photographer this is where you need to go." Now he was hooked!!! A few months later I got my acceptance letter and the deal was sealed :o)
I spent 3 years studying photography at Brooks. Sometimes I loved it - sometimes I hated it. The program is set up so that the first year you have a variety of assignments that expose you to all types of photography. I quickly realized a few things: 
1- I don't like shooting product photography - I learned this one shooting the "Small Product" assignment. 2- I don't like shooting fashion - I learned this shooting the "Fashion" assignments in 311.3- I don't like shooting architecture - I learned this in 311 as well!4 - I REALLY love shooting children - I learned this in Portraiture 241 & 2425- Weddings are also fun to shoot - I learned this from real life experience.6- Being a celebrity photographer (tends to be a side business when working on movie sets) is NOT how I want to build my business. Too competitive, time consuming and stressful - Learned this taking Celebrity Portraiture with John Russo 
During my last 9 months at school I realized that as fun as shooting on a movie set would be, I didn't want really see myself living in Hollywood or in that environment. Over time I began to recognize my passion for photographing children and developed my own "style" for shooting. Shortly after is when photoEdge came into the picture, but I'll share more on that later :o)