Thanks to a little "facebook memory" throwback, I realized yesterday that exactly 5 years ago, I was presenting my business plan to a board for my last project as a college grad. I was nervous, I was excited. It was a "mock" business plan, not intended for real life, but it's crazy to think back to how I was feeling in that moment and know that I had absolutely NO idea how far that business plan would actually take me in real life, or that it would actually COME TO LIFE!
Just for a back story, for those of you who don't know how this career got started for me, I picked up a camera for my digital photography class senior year of high school, and was simply completing the assignments to get the grade. I wasn't sure what I was going to do for my senior project at the time, and my digital photography teacher (shout out Doug Huegli) suggested that I take senior portraits for my senior project, as he enjoyed what I was doing with my individual class assignments. I figured, well I don't have anything else to do! So, I setup a fake little photography business and took about 10 senior's portraits for free, again, to complete an assignment. The next summer, I had people asking me to take their senior portraits, so I asked to borrow a camera from Doug again and was like "no problem people, I'm not doing anything this summer, might as well." Then, my dad had the GENIUS idea of "hey, maybe you should charge people for taking their portraits?" I was like WOW, great idea! Soon enough, I started making more money than I thought possible for how easy taking photos was. So, I bought my first Canon camera in 2008. The first photo I took with it was a selfie in a mirror (see above), and I think it's hilarious and awesome that I just remembered taking it and actually was able to find it on one of my 30 hard drives!
Anyways, I was definitely not intending to blog about this, but yesterday had me thinking all day how absolutely insane it is that all of this, my entire career, what I am most passionate about in life, all of this started with a little suggestion from Doug Huegli and my dad. Oh and my mom thought of the name "RP Imagery" for my senior project, so credit to my mother, too! My "business plan" that I created at the end of college, 4 years later, was also to complete an assignment... just get the task done... I 100% was not anticipating on actually using it.
And here I am.
I'm blown away with where these last 5 years have taken me, how many experiences I have had, how many epic places I have had the opportunity to travel to, and honestly - the truly genuine, amazing people that I have met along the way.
These are the most random photos ever because I went through facebook as fast as possible grabbing a few photos that when I looked at, I said to myself "I would not have met this person and/or I would not have traveled to this place if not for my photography/videography."
This is getting too long for something that was not even supposed to be a blog post, so I'm going to wrap it up with saying that I'm THANKFUL that I didn't know then, what I know now. I was naive, unexperienced, and had no idea what my life or career was going to look like, but I truly would not have it any other way. I could only hope that the next 5 years will look half as awesome for me as the last 5 years. Thank you Facebook Memories for taking me down memory lane.
