It’s wild to think about how it all began... a few Polaroids, a handful of disposable cameras, and a lot of curiosity. Since then, I’ve used nearly twenty different cameras and taken over two million photos, documenting everything from everyday life to unforgettable adventures. Looking back, I can trace my journey not just through the images, but through the evolution of the tools I used to capture them.
On family vacations I would also spend some of the money I had saved on disposable cameras so that I could take pictures of the amazing places we would travel to. After I picked up my first Canon point and shoot in 2004 I stopped shooting with disposable cameras.
My photography journey started out with a polaroid instant camera that my grandmother bought me one year for Christmas. I recall vivid memories of that day walking around my grandmother’s house in West Virginia looking for interesting candid photos to take of people in that special moment. I recall taking a picture of my great grandmother who was resting in a chair. I remember stacking presents up and taking a photo of all the boxes from dozens of gifts. I probably ended up shooting hundreds of photos with that camera over the years I used it, before the era of cell phone cameras.
My first digital point and shoot camera was a 3.2 Megapixel Canon PowerShot SD110 3MP Digital Elph with 2x Optical Zoom which I bought in 2004 after I graduated high school and moved to Florida. It was sleek, small, silver, and surprisingly durable. I took thousands of photos with this camera and took it to dozens of events in my pocket without ever getting any damage. This thing was easy to use and it got the job done.
In the Summer of 2011 I picked up the newer version of Canon's Powershot which was one of the best selling point and shoot consumer cameras of all time. The 4x increase in megapixels was a big reason for my purchase. I would take my camera on trips and photograph my journeys for things that my iphone camera just wouldnt cut it.
I loved the Canon PowerShot so much that I bought a newer version, even though I still took most of my photos with my iphone.
My first cell phone was a Blue Nokia 3310 that had a snake video game and the ability to text message. I got my second cell phone in 2003 when the Sanyo SCP-5300 launched as the country’s first camera phone in the USA. The Sanyo SCP-5300, released in the US by Sprint in November 2002, was the country's first camera phone, featuring a clamshell design and a 0.3MP integrated camera… The phone featured a 0.3-megapixel camera, which produced images that were considered "mediocre at best" by 2002 standards but were groundbreaking for the time. Let me tell you, I thought those .3MP photos were incredible haha. It also had two color screens and free internet at the time, before data plans existed which was crazy. I remember ordering movie tickets through my phone’s specialized browser and sending photos.
My next camera phone in 2007 was the Motorola SLVR L7 which upgraded to a 1.3 MP camera. 4 times the pixels, wow!! I missed out on the slimness of the Razr since I got in early on the Sanyo SCP-5300 but when I saw the new camera on the silver, I had to have it. While most people loved the cool flip phone ability of the phone, I enjoyed the simple elegance of the silver and the ability to immediately text or use my screen when I wanted. It was so cool being able to send text messages from my pocket without looking at my phone while in class, movies, or anywhere. (The RAZR owners had to pull their phones out to read my text message, Haha)
The original iphone launched in 2007 starting at $499 which was an insanely high price at the time. For comparison, the SILVR was about half the price of the new iphone. On September 5, 2007, Apple reduced the price of the 8 GB iPhone from $599 to $399 and I immediately went out and bought one with money I had saved from working. The 2mp camera was a nice little bump from previous my 1.3mp Motorola SILVR and came reasonably close to my 3.2MP point and shoot from cannon. There was no video, no flash, it had a fixed focus, and the camera worked decent in good light, but not very well in lowlight conditions.
I soon upgraded to the iPhone 3G which was a nice upgrade from the original iPhone when it came to the camera. The iPhone 3G came with auto-exposure and auto-focus which definitely helped get some better shots in low light and more keepers with proper focus overall. The iPhone 3G also had something new... the app store.
Some of the first camera apps came out for the iPhone in 2008. I used the "Pano" app in 2008 before apple later added it with the iPhone 6. "Night Camera" was another app that was great for low-light photography with the iPhone.
I was enjoying my iPhone 3g so much that I skipped over the iPhone 3Gs for 6-8 months and decided to wait for the iPhone 4 after hearing about all of the incredible features from rumors and leaks.
The iPhone 4 may not have been the best "phone" with the antennae-gate scandal and people "holding their phones wrong" or "not using a case", but the camera was a massive upgrade over its predecessor. Compared to my iPhone 3G, the iPhone 4 had a 5MP camera which was almost double my 3MP previously. It also had video recording which was a big deal at the time.
The iPhone 5s featured a 1.2 MP FaceTime HD front camera capable of 720p video that the iphone 4 did not have. This was the first time I had a selfie camera that could record HD video, making it easier for me to film myself and friends in short, shareable clips... a core part of the social media platform "Vine's" culture at the time. The addition of slow-mo videos and burst mode photos really made the camera so much more enjoyable for being creative.
The iPhone 5s was Apple’s one of Apple's first LTE phones, so uploading a 6-second looping video felt almost instantaneous, which fed Vine’s viral momentum. I would regularly take short videos as a way to express myself creatively and post them on the Vine platform in 2013.
My next upgrade was the iphone 7+ which had dual 12MP cameras, including a 2x optical zoom. The optical zoom was a nice feature to not have to crop my photos in post, even if they weren't the full 12MP. I loved the panorama feature, which gave me the ability to take photos of massive mountainous landscapes when I would travel and go hiking out West.
The iphone X didnt really have major notable improvements to the camera over my iphone 7 at the time. The iphone X was the first phone to use Face ID, which I guess one could say used the camera feature of the phone, haha.
The iPhone 12 Pro Max brought major leaps from the iPhone X... with larger sensors, better low-light performance, and improved stabilization which made mobile photography noticeably sharper and smoother. These upgrades fueled higher-quality content creation, transforming photo and video standards across apps and social media.
I currently use both the iphone 16 pro and the iphone 12 pro max to take photos and videos while I am out in the field or traveling. The iphone 16 is nice little upgrade from the 12 pro max. The megapixels are 48MP vs the previous 12MP of my iphone 12 pro max... yet I cant say that I can tell much of a difference in just the 4x change in megapixels alone. The ability to zoom 5x instead of 2.5x optical zoom is a nice feature when trying to just get some in the field or behind the scenes footage of wildlife since wildlife is usually a decent distance away. (it lowers the megapixel count, but the quality is getting better)
It was April 2018 and I was months away from a trip to go hiking in Banff, Canada which is regarded as one of the most beautiful places on the planet. I visited Banff the year before and dreamed of one day buying a camera try and capture the beauty of the glacier-fed lakes. I had just visited some private land and saw a pair of red-tailed hawks nesting and missed some incredible photographs, which made me decide that it was time... time to finally break down and buy a pair of binoculars or a camera.
I decided the Sony a6500 for $1,200 with a kit lens was a good entry point for me to get into digital photography. I was shooting everyday and quickly learning adobe lightroom, and then posting my work on social media afterwards. In a couple months my work was noticed I was invited on a free 10 day trip to the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone. (if I could cover airfare, since someone else had cancelled) During that trip I took some incredible photos with my camera, but I also fell in love the with Nikon DSLR camera and the 200-500mm which I was able to use briefly one day. Within 30 days of my trip to Wyoming I ended up going out and buying a Nikon D850. I still took landscape photos with my Sony but over time I used it less and less. (even though I had probably 600,000+ exposures on it with the digital shutter)
After picking up the Nikon D850 I quickly began increasing my shutter exposure count. I was photographing sunset timelapses and lots of wildlife. I would regularly shoot 1,500-2,000 images in just 2 hours of photographing wildlife. The amount of detail the Nikon D850 offered in 2018 with it's 46MP sensor was incredible. It was almost 2x the pixel count of my Sony a6500 and I could tell a huge difference. I also really enjoyed the rear screen of the D850 which showed high quality detail and resolution of my captures. I really enjoyed having a high resolution camera to go with my wildlife lens which required less than 8 feet for minimum focal distance. If I was able to get close enough to my subjects, I could easily get more detail than many other photographers. Even photographers with $12,000 lenses needed 14-18 feet for the minimum focus distance at the time. My ability to capture lots of details photographs of wildlife (and especially owls) helped me get thousands and thousand of followers on Instagram and Facebook. (before I deleted my original accounts)
Even though I already had the Nikon D850 and the Sony a6500 I decided to pick up the Nikon D500. I was photographing long exposure sunsets with my Nikon D850 and my Sony a6500 with my 315mm (effective) lens was just not enough to photograph birds and other wildlife I was regularly encountering on my 1/4 walk down the beach each evening for sunset. The Nikon D500 gave me 10FPS and allowed me to use my Nikkor 200-500mm F5.6 and get some nice reach. (750mm with the D500 crop sensor) I took some excellent photos with my D500 but after a year I wasn't quite using it enough, so I ended up selling it.
I've loved my Nikon D850 since the day I bought it. It has well over 200,000 exposures taken with the manual shutter, which is the rated exposure count for the camera's shutter. I sold my a6500 after I started using my Nikon D850 for Landscapes and eventually I sold my Nikon D500 since I wasn't using it quite as much as I thought I would. I think the next move for me is the Sony a1ii and the Sony 200-600mm 6.3 to take incredible video, get a nice FPS boost, and still keep the pixel quality I have enjoyed over the last 7 years.
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Explore South Florida’s Majestic Kites: Swallow-tailed, Snail, and White-tailed Kites
South Florida is home to some of the most captivating birds of prey in North America — the Swallow-tailed Kite, Snail Kite, and White-tailed Kite. Known for their graceful flight and unique hunting behavior, these raptors are often seen soaring over wetlands, marshes, and open fields. South Florida is one of the only regions in the United States where birdwatchers can observe all three kite species in their natural habitat. From the striking black-and-white Swallow-tailed Kite to the snail-hunting Snail Kite and the elusive White-tailed Kite, these birds make South Florida a must-visit destination for birding and wildlife photography.
