Growing up, I heard stories about how in the early 1920's, my great grandfather developed his photographs in the bathtub in my grandmother's house. He colored black and white photographs before color photos existed and he designed artistic triptychs. My grandmother was apparently inspired, and worked in the Life Magazine photo archives (known as the picture morgue) since the magazine's conception. She also worked with Cornell Capa, a Hungarian American photographer. My mother was named after Shelley Mydans, one of my grandmother's friends from Life, who was the wife of Carl Mydans, a war photographer.

My own introduction to photography happened at Camp Chingachgook on Lake George in New York where I spent rainy camp days hanging out in the dark room developing photos I had taken of a cat stuck in a tree. I over-developed all of these photos, probably because I loved swishing the photo paper around in the "magical" chemicals a little too much.

The pinhole photography J-term class I took at Middlebury College (that I actually got credit for) piqued my interest some more. I was amused that I could take photographs using a shoebox! But once again, I never quite mastered the exact science behind the development process (maybe it was because the dark room was in the basement of the dining hall and I had recently watched too many scary movies).

What I remember the most was my professor questioning the validity of the emerging digital technologies and the huge wave of change happening in the industry, "What is the definition of photography now that everything can be manipulated?" But to me, this all sounded so exciting! The "new" photography sounded like it combined my love for film and my love for art into one perfect way of expressing myself!

During my senior summer, I led backpacking trips for international youth from Iraq, Iran, Switzerland, the UK, Canada and the US through Ansel Adams Wilderness in the Sierra Nevada in California. Here, I dabbled in black and white photography inspired from hiking inside the photographs I had studied in class. At this point, I really thought photography was going to open up as a possible career path for me but as fate would have it, the timing of my immersion into the field was short lived. For a graduation gift from Middlebury, my parents unknowingly gifted me with arguably the last known non-digital camera on planet earth (with huge lens, expensive gear, etc) and a plane ticket to New Zealand. Unfortunately, during a fun photo adventure on a beach in Hawaii, a bunch of sand got in the lens and ruined the roll of film I was just about to develop. By the time I got back to New York, the camera seemed like ancient technology. I didn't know exactly where photography was heading, so I decided to wait it out a bit to make sure I wasn't going to get caught up on another cusp of another evolution.

In the meantime, I got sidetracked into other creative outlets and ways of expressing myself. But I never lost my eye and vision for seeing the photos that I wanted to capture. As I completed the Adirondack Fire Tower Challenge (hiking 23 mountains in the Adirondacks and Catskills), I took a lot of photos in my mind's eye of imaginative and creative images I saw along the trails - faces in the rocks, mystical creatures made of moss, patterns in the trees, designs in the dirt. Despite not being able to climb tall mountains anymore, I find immense joy exploring calmer terrain and discovering hidden treasure - artwork made by the earth! Even though digital technology is old now, I'm still so amazed that I can take high quality photos on a device that fits into my pocket and has no complicated development process involved.

MY LOVE FOR PLANET EARTH
I fell in love with our planet meandering around the mountains, rivers, lakes and valleys in national and state parks in New Zealand, Canada and the United States as well "forest bathing" in my own backyard in the Adirondacks of New York.