How I Became a Photographer | San Diego Portrait Photography

People always want to know how I became a wedding and portrait photographer. I seriously get asked this question all the time, so since it’s something a lot of people want to know, I’m just going to get straight to the point!

My business started really small. I was a senior in high school, and I wasn’t making much money working part-time at Best Buy. I was planning on going to a trade school after I graduated so I could have a career in video production, so I was definitely open to making extra cash through any kind of side hustles that came my way. 

In the beginning of high school, I took my first photography class, and for the next few years I would do photoshoots of friends after school just for fun, and when I started posting some of the photos on Myspace and Facebook, people started asking me to do their senior portraits to send out on their graduation announcements. 

So, for my first year in business, that was pretty much my specialty. I’d do a friend’s senior photos, they’d recommend me to one of their friends, and so on. I didn’t really ever get asked to do much else until my older friends started having babies, which led to a lot of family & newborn sessions, which I quickly discovered were not my thing. 

At this point, I had finished high school and it was time to make some big decisions. Financially, it made more sense for me to attend a community college, and that’s what I ended up doing. As much as I wanted to pursue video production, I was proud that I had found a profitable skill so early in life, and I decided to run with it.

I ended up majoring in photography, and I hit a lot of big milestones along the way: my first wedding, my first boudoir shoot (which ended up being a total nightmare, but I’ll save that story for another time), my first time being published… It might not have felt like it at the time, but I grew a lot in the span of a few years. 

So once I was nearing the end of my education, I started thinking about what my next steps were. I started asking myself questions like “what do you want to be known for?”, “what do you want your message to be?”, and “how can you use your photography to make a difference in the world?” 

Eventually, I was able to narrow my focus and sum up my mission in a simple phrase: I want to inspire everyone I photograph to love themselves more, and I want to show the world that everybody is beautiful, and every body is beautiful. Through boudoir, weddings, and portraiture, this is what I hope to achieve. 

So, keeping true to my roots, here are some photos from one of my favorite senior photo sessions. Everything about this shoot was perfect; the lighting, the location, and, of course, the subject!