alexluyckxphoto

Art and creativity has always run strong in my family. My mother writes, my father creates stained glass, and my brother creates music. All through school I took the usual art classes, learning drawing, painting, and sculpture, all through elementary school and into high school. Sure I was okay at them, but there never was any passion, and drawing anything beyond spaceships, I was fairly hopeless. But it did give me a base to express my creativity in a physical sense, beyond my Lego creations. But my artistic expression lay outside of the traditional forms of art. I was introduced to photography, beyond the snapshot, in an English class. A roll of black and white film, and a Pentax K1000 from the school's photography lab was all it took. I was hooked, this was exactly what I had been looking for, so at a garage sale I found an old Minolta rangefinder and started shooting, playing with aperture, shutter speed, and of course teaching myself how everything worked. Film was my medium of choice, digital wasn't yet an option, as most consumer grade digital cameras were still just entering the market and the costs were still high, especially for a high school student going into college and working at McDonalds. I scored a good deal on a digital camera, and soon found my film work falling by the wayside, drawn into the ease of use and near instant options that it brings. But what I didn't expect was that it would be a detriment to my photography, losing my artistic flare, I became obsessed with the technical aspects of photography, noise, sharpness, and perfect exposure. It wasn't really a bad thing, in fact I feel it was again a good foundation building for my work, because when I returned to film I was a much stronger photography, and the film simply brought me back to the creative aspect of the medium. I was able to create stronger images knowing the technical details and the rules, and being able to bend and break them to get my image how I imaged it, the first time. And of course remembering to slow down, take my time, and most importantly, have fun.