It was so blurry I could hardly make out what I was looking at. The sky was gray and dull. My arm moved up toward my face and rotated the lens a bit to the left. A flower gradually began to appear, wilted and nearly lifeless. The colorless frame amazingly appeared stunning through the eyes of the lens.

I am a firm believer that hobbies help mold personality and have always seen photography as a gift. Photography is the key to unlocking a closed mind; when I look through the viewfinder I see what everyone has the capability to see but fails to notice.

I have grown to spot the beauty in even the most repulsive frames of society. This has helped me squeeze positive aspects from a situation and allowed me to have optimism. Some people look at a pile of trash or something as simple as an apple and see nothing but something unimportant. I have learned to take the time to notice things from a different perspective, even if it means leaving my boundaries of comfort. With the right lens, anything can be perceived differently; maybe all that was needed was a slight adjustment of color, or a minor skew along the edges.

Taking pictures is not simply seeing an appealing image and capturing it with a snap, it is a way to broaden one’s horizons and see things with a different perspective that may never be seen again. Photography allows me to step out of the border of everyday life and see things in a new light.