A pic of my favorite personal moments from mid August of 2016 to August of 2017. Photography is a new endeavor of mine, having just bought my first starter DSLR last August and this is a means in which I can learn to use the tools at hand.

I'm a designer and painter by trade, but my partner had an interest in photography and I started to experiment with his camera last year. Leading me to want my own. I noticed a significant difference between what my phone was able to do and my DSLR and wanted to get a better understanding of the medium. Stylistically I didn't go into this with any real intention other than learning. I think along the way my own voice started to come to but much of it was just experimenting and capturing moments as they present themselves.

The camera is a low end, starter DSLR. A Canon Rebel EOS T5i, cost me like 300 bucks on sale, otherwise I've adjusted the photos in Lightroom and VSCO. I just went out with my camera on a daily basis always strapped to my shoulder and tried to capture as much as I could along the way. I wasn't real concerned with coming up with a completely new perspective and being original as I was just catching last memories. I shot daily, went home and sorted through the images, pulled out the 5 or 10 best shots and just did some relatively quick adjustments, bringing up the blacks, adjusting some of the lighting and balancing out the composition with some cropping.

I'm not really sure. People seem to have expected me to pick it up pretty easier, but it didn't feel so easy to me. I watched a lot of tutorials and read a lot of articles on low light, long exposures, how to capture the right moments, and the dynamics of composition. What I really learned was that I'm not good at planning photos. It's really just a matter of the right timing. Of course I have to know a bit about how to use the camera to capture it but mostly it's just about being ready for it. I used the camera solely on manual settings for the first 8 months and started using some of the presets afterwards once I understood what they did.

I don't know if I'll pursue photography to any more extensive lengths, but I've enjoyed it, and it's now a part of my regular life and routine. But I really enjoyed just learning about everything. Having a better understanding of what goes into photography really makes me appreciate the images I see from professionals. In some ways it demystifies a lot of the more gimmicky approaches but I have total respect for truly staged and directed moments and am so impressed with the insight and thought that goes into creating such a captivating shot from nothing. I consider my shots to be relatively simple, and mostly just luck of the draw.

Anthony Hurd

Anthony describes his work as a selfish endeavor of exploring his own personal demons and understanding the ever changing landscapes of life. A way of expressing sometimes the inexpressible. Since the loss of his sister 10 years ago, and a series of unfortunate events including the end of an 18 year relationship following, life has been a seeming test of survival mentally, physically and spiritually. The motifs change over time but currently the works he's pursuing focus on cyclical nature of life, the rise and fall, the destruction and rebirth, the dark and light. Fighting depression and anxiety with introspection and personal growth. The work is a bit of a celebration of survival, and the depths of darkness that have revealed his own personal greatest truths. Namely that most everything he thought about himself is unfounded, untrue, that life is the unknown, that he is an emotional being, that his connection with the world is to be determined by his own actions and pursuit. Ever changing, always a work in progress, his work and process are fluid, and changes on a whim, without a plan from its creation, seeing where the roads lead, hoping for a peaceful and educational resolve.

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