How a point and shoot taught me to see myself more clearly.
Minolta Freedom Zoom 130ex. Lomo LC-A. Olympus Trip AF 30. My beloved point and shoot film cameras served me well as a tool for expression, but, unbeknownst to me, they’d also serve me as a mirror. Showing me a bit more about who I really was, how my mistakes shaped how I saw the world, and where I really was struggling.
My story will film photography – and by extension, hobbies in general – must start with one of the most dangerous beliefs I had: my hobbies, my talents, and my interests, if they are to have any value or meaning, must earn me money.
Y’all, I have a vocation. I am a content designer and, only interrupted by layoffs here and there, that is how I earn a living. By designing user experiences with content!!! And while I do love my job, believe you me, I don’t find content design a hobby by any means. I also don’t need my hobbies to earn me money. I want my vocation to earn me money and my hobbies to bring me joy. And if photography has taught me nothing else, it’s taught me that the worst thing I can do is turn a hobby into a side hustle.
Not many people know this, but I used to want to work in film. If you had asked 17-year-old Thalia what her intentions were, she would’ve promptly informed you she wanted nothing more than to do the Directors Guild of America Assistant Director Training Program, a two-year program in either New York or Los Angeles that led participants to a career as a Second Assistant Director upon completion. I loved film at the time and wanted to pursue it as a career.
In addition to wanting to be a filmmaker, I also was really into photography. Well into college, I thought myself a photographer and even did some freelance photography for some extra change pretty often. I thought I was good and invested in my work accordingly. New cameras and lenses, websites and logos. I think I even designed some business cards at some point?
But after a particularly horrible client experience that no only robbed me of my desire to create but also of my confidence in who I was as a creative, I was left empty and without a medium for self-expression (Out of this experience, The Disco was born a few years later! Thank God!)
I was crushed, uninspired, and feeling like I didn’t have any business creating at all. At least not with a camera.
But I know now I was missing the point because I was focused on a dollar. My adventures in photography should’ve never been about running no dang business or even being super great. I should’ve been focused on having fun and being pleased with what I was doing for myself.
What’s plagued me particularly on the topic of photography is the devastating duo of comparison and insecurity. I was comparing myself to others, seeing themselves as bigger and better than me, and consequently seeing myself as smaller to fit the narrative I was writing. Now I won’t place all the blame on me, but when it really comes down to it, I must take accountability for the part I played in the story I helped write.
When it came to photography, over the last few years, I wasn’t as serious as people around me. I wasn’t as into it or knowledgable about it or dedicated to it. So not only did I think I was worse at it than others, but I thought that I was no good at all. In the super recent past, I’ve found myself not even trusting myself with a camera at all. Surely someone else should take this photo. I’m not the photographer here.
But I am, though. I don’t have to have a bunch of degrees or experience or whatever to be a photographer. I’m not one in the professional sense, but I am a photographer with my own eye, my own practice, my own approach, my own style. And just because I don’t do as much or know as much as the next person does not mean that what I do or know is nothing at all.
My journey with photography is really a journey with confidence. When I was younger, a kid and teenager, I had all the confidence in the world. I knew what I liked and so I did it and I got better at it and I was good. When I got out of college, I grew more self-conscious and more aware of how afraid I was to fail in front of others. I hid talents, made them small, and tucked them away only for my enjoyment.
But things don’t stay hidden forever.
I got a drug store disposable camera in December of 2021 for me and Ameerah’s trip to Mexico City.
From that first disposable camera, I was hooked. I was drawn by the mystery of film photography. I knew little about it and was excited to explore. I, for all my life, have loved to learn and this was an entirely new frontier. In the name of neuroplasticity, I couldn’t help myself. I dove head first into this new hobby!
And thus began my film photography journey that became the rebirth of an arm of my creativity that I had left to atrophy, in fear that I may be revealed as the fraud I thought others saw me as. Regardless, through film photography, I began to express myself again. I wouldn’t dare call myself a photographer, less the real film heads hear me, but I knew I was having fun again and doing something that interested me and allowed me to capture the world around me in a way that felt really unique and special to me.
I was having fun and that’s all that mattered.
I don’t have to be good or skilled or whatever. I can just do something and have fun with it and therein lies the meaning! And just because it’s a hobby doesn’t mean I have to downplay what I do.
I take nice pictures! There! I said it!
Now you or Tyler Mitchell or whoever might not agree with me, but you know what? That’s okay! I don’t need other people to think what I do is worth doing for me to find it worth doing.
And what’s super painful is that I never used to care in the first place! Thalia from age 0-20 very seriously couldn't have cared less about what other people thought about her gifts and the way she used them. She was so secure in her talents and what she could do. But somewhere after that, I lost something that I’m still trying to recover. A bit of bravery, of fearlessness, of disregard for the opinions of others, a bit confidence that who I was in that moment was indeed enough.
Somewhere along the line, I stopped taking photos because I didn’t think I was a photographer.
But I am. I think the pictures I take are really good. And you know what, dear reader? That’s all that matters to me.
All that self-minimization and grind culture approach to hobbies and being afraid of what people will say? That ends today. Right here. Right now.
A hobby doesn’t require approval or celebration from others. It requires interest, my friends. Interest is enough. Caring is enough. Curiosity is enough. A desire to learn is enough. You don’t have to bring anything else to a hobby – no skill, no commitment, no years of relevant experience, no references.
Photography taught me, more clearly than anything else, that your perspective is unique and special and meaningful. You don’t have to earn a perspective. It is yours.
And this? This is mine.
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