Five years ago, when I was a junior in high school, everyone kept asking me what I wanted to be when I grew up. For anyone who is a junior or senior in high school, you know how stressful that is. Picking a career that you are going to do until you retire (or so you think), picking a college, getting accepted to the college, the list just goes on and on. Ever since I was little, I thought for sure that I would be a teacher. I would make my little sister play school with me all the time. It came as a big surprise to my mom when I was a junior and decided that I wanted to do something other than being a teacher. I didn’t know what it was that I wanted to do, but I was changing. I decided that I wanted to own my own business. I grew up on my parent’s dairy farm and couldn’t picture myself working for someone else. I started taking a photography class just for fun at school, the same class my older brother had taken a few years before. While he was taking the class, I was always trying to borrow his camera. He would get so mad at me because I was borrowing/taking it without his permission all the time. I was excited to take the class because my mom had recently bought me an awesome $300 camera for my birthday. The class was more like a study hall; it was entirely self taught and all we had to do was put together a portfolio with a certain number of pictures and turn it in at the end of the semester. The pictures had to be part of a theme and I chose water as my theme. I was having a blast taking pictures of water droplets as they rolled off the edge of the barn, frozen ponds, ducks in the water, etc. My brother called me one day and told me that he was driving by the Most Road and noticed the ice on the sign had slid off but was still partially hanging. I grabbed my camera and drove up the road. I started snapping my point and shoot camera like a crazy paparazzi before the ice fell off. It ended up being the best picture in my portfolio and I just came across a copy of it this morning while looking for something on my computer. I believe that this is a copied version of the picture because I remember it looking more contast-y. I still think it’s a really cool picture. It was about then that I decided I wanted to be a photographer. The photography school I went to was incredibly challenging and expensive, so I was worried that I might be making the wrong choice. After all, there was no guarantee that any of us would have a successful business after we graduated. Soon after the school year started, it became obvious that I had made the right decision. It’s been five years since I took this picture and so much has changed! On July 1, I will be celebrating two years as a business owner and professional photographer as well as two years since I graduated photo school. I never would have guessed that my career would have taken off the way that it did! You just never know what’s going to happen and I’m excited to see what happens in the next few years! 
