A Peek at the Peeks: Photography

When my dad bought me my Canon Rebel the Christmas before we moved to China, he told me, "If you can't do anything with it but the green square, you have to give it back." Forever after instilled with a fear of the auto function, I dabbled around here & there, trying to pick up a thing or two about photography.

But when we finally made it to China, I started to realize that the new world around me was so unique & different from anything I'd been a part of before. The only way to capture it was in pictures. Thus another catalyst to forge onward down the confusing yet so creatively challenging & rewarding path of photography. As the years have gone by and my courage to stick my lens in people's faces has increased, I'm even more convinced that the essence of a culture is captured in the faces of the local people. (If you look at some of my favorite shots posted below, you'll see the increased amount of faces as the years passed. Though the butterflies & palm trees didn't argue about having their pictures taken, the faces tell a much better story I think!)

This is the very first shot I took in the Guangzhou airport. I hardly knew a thing about aperture or any other fancy camera terms (and to be honest--I still don't!), but it was the beginning of a most excellent journey of trying to figure it all out!