When still going to school September was the beginning of a new year: clean notebooks, new stationery, and new resolutions. Although I graduated three years ago, I keep feeling that with the colder weather come new plans and brighter ideas.
So here I am, like every year, starting something new. This time I am more enthusiastic than ever before, more confident and ready (but nonetheless scared too).
I am officially a photographer now!
How did I start photographing and how did I get into it?
I have been photographing since the dawn of time; the first photos I remember taking were one of a cow and one of my mom’s friend when I was about 7/8. That was all anagogic and I still have those photos in a book somewhere.
One time I went on a school trip to Rome and the photographer who was gonna develop the photos messed the film up; he told me “well, that’s not that terrible, you can go to Rome again”. I was shocked and cried a lot.
Time passed and I kept stealing my dad’s new gadgets, usually point-and-shoot cameras. On vacation, at home, always, everywhere.
When I graduated from High School my parents gave me a bridge camera as a present. The best present I ever got, since this started my passion.
Meanwhile, I had also started this blog (after a few others, by the way). I never knew what made me love blogging: I thought it was having my little corner of the Internet where I could write whatever I wanted, until I realized Internet is not a safe haven, on the contrary, it’s a pretty tricky place to spend your time on. However, I kept blogging and photographing my daily life. Silly things, a prologue to my Insta-life in a way, photographing food, clothes, myself, the long trips to Turin and back home,..
My blog was (and still is) a mess. I kept reading that a blog should have a focus on one topic. But what was the topic I wanted to talk about? I love eating healthy, but also baking, I love traveling a lot, I love music, nature,.. every time it was a different topic I wanted to talk about, but the photos in the posts were indispensable.
While I kept giving more attention the photos for my blog, I realized photographs were the easiest way for me to communicate. I have always had doubts about the language I should write in: my family is Dutch (I currently live in the Netherlands), but I was living in Italy and had been my whole life, and English was the language I was studying at University, and also “the” language of the Internet.
I graduated and my parents (bless them) gave me a DSLR camera as a present, the one I still use now, a Canon 600d. From that moment, I started an ongoing learning process, I started watching photographs from professionals, looking up information on the Internet, experimenting by myself, reading about settings, and I started stepping away from the Automatic Settings.
Since I moved to the Netherlands and I started earning my own money, I have been able to attend some workshops and be more involved, and buy some more gear too. I have been photographing friends, babies, a wedding, a small business for which I also made this video, lots of food (benefits of having a boyfriend who is a cook), places we visited, and much more.
I understand now that photography is my language. It’s the way I try to convey emotions, often melancholic, sometimes dreamy, and mostly natural.
If you want to se what I’ve been up to, you will find my portfolio here.
I would love to receive some feedback from you.
(These two lovely girls are my friends Mirjam and Tessa; please make sure to link back to http://www.juliettevaneijsden.com and ask my permission before using these photos).
What about you? What is it that most inspires you? What makes you jump out of bed in the morning, and what keeps you up late?