Do you really have to go to school to do PHOTOGRAPHY?

To begin this, I have to tell a little story.

I grew up surrounded by cameras, my father - even though he is and has always been a mechanic - loved cameras, wether they were video or photography (back then you'd have either or, never the two in one), he always had one at his disposal, I can put together my life in video AND pictures if I want, which is pretty awesome.
He was never incredible at shooting, but he was pretty good and those cameras where pretty bad in quality when compared to the ones we have nowadays. I'll have to compose a full thread of photos from then to now.

I didn't even give it a second thought when he'd let me hold the cameras, I learnt everything about them at the time and went around shooting, wasting film most of the time. We'd always have the newest cameras, as soon as the old ones broke down or the newest tech would be groundbreaking. Unfortunately there was a time where financial crisis hit my country and my family did not escape, we downsized our house and our expenses, our camera broke down and for years we didn't buy a new one. So, when we did we invested in a Nikon, which was awesome to me. I was going to college soon and almost went to a Photography Major, but it was at an expensive college in the most expensive city so I had to change it. Ended up going for a major in Journalism and Communication - little did I know, it wouldn't let me be creative at all, it wasn't a waste, but it also was not not a waste, ya know? - gladly I had the luck of minoring in Arts, studying cinema and photography, which was amazing (but no, I did not learn how to photograph there, I just learnt about other photographers).

Fast forward to two years after college, broke, unemployed, depressed, bored, not a creative thought ran through my mind - and I was always a sucker for creativity in art -, so I picked up the camera and pieces started coming together, so this started to happen.

In case you're wondering, this is still in the same DSLR my folks bought, the Nikon, which was about 5 years old at that time.

I was shooting mostly landscapes and I loved it, loved the process of looking for what people don't usually look at; setting up, waiting for the perfect time and click!; the post-production, editing, going all the way out and transforming a picture or just retouching. All of this was fascinating to me and I was learning faster then ever before. I was not making any money out of this.

I had to go through yet another rut, looking and having jobs I hated in retail, until I gave it all up, sold my camera, sold lenses, bought a better camera, started to learn even more, decided to take my art to yet another level and started shooting with my girlfriend.

And offered a few photoshoots to increase my experience.

This is part one of this story, I'll post the other one tomorrow. Great photos to come, you just wait.