"I'm not trying to be the best. I'm just trying to be me."

I started from the bottom. No schooling. No one to give me advice. I didn't even have a camera. My first years as a photographer, not exactly sure when, maybe 2002 or 2003, were spent taking shots of bands with throwaway cameras I would pick up at the supermarket before shows. I was a roadie for local New Jersey bands. Carrying equipment, selling merchandise, driving the van, only taking shots when I could fit it in. I upgraded to a Kodak Easyshare Z612 as my first foray into the digital world in October of 2006. The pictures taken with that camera are probably some of my favorite photos and those years my most fun times behind a lens. A few years later in 2009 I purchased a Canon G9. I liked it but never got attached to it like the Kodak. My original Easyshare eventually died (I still have it though!) and I purchased another used one. I carried around both the G9 and the Z612 for a bunch of years shooting with both. Finally, in late 2016, I was able to purchase my first "real" camera, a Canon EOS 80D. I'm having a blast and learning so much now that my capabilities have been increased. The 80D has elevated my photography immensely. The trials and tribulations of using so many settings and features is daunting and frustrating at times but I'm accepting the challenge and loving it. I'm pushing myself to be better for me and no one else. I'll never forget my point and shoot days though. But it's not really about what equipment you use to take your shots. Whether a picture is phenomenal or blurry as fuck, whether it was taken with a phone or the most expensive camera on the market, it's still a moment captured in time. And that's always worth something. Keep shooting and shoot everything you can. Capture those moments. Someday, maybe soon, maybe decades later, you or someone you may not even know could look at one of your shots and be reminded of a time or an experience that could have been lost if not for your documentation of it.