Celebrating AANHPI Heritage Month Stories: Kevin Chang
a gallery curated by Flickr
May is Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month and each week we’re highlighting the work of some of the community’s amazing photographers on Flickr. This week, we invite you to explore an album curated by the talented photographer, Kevin Chang, as he shares about his lifelong love of photography. “My name is Kevin Chang, I currently live in Chicago with my beautiful wife and our equally beautiful Shiba Inu. I've loved photography ever since my godfather gave me my first camera as a child, an old Minolta SRT-102. My primary work at that time included black and white still lifes of whatever my mother left on the kitchen table and blurry images of leafless trees. Film was much more affordable then, so it was fine. I eventually moved to a digital format but over the past few years I've found myself returning to film. As I've gotten older and life has turned into a torrent of events, work, social obligations, taxes, I've become more appreciative of the aspects of photography that slow the pace down. Instead of taking hundreds of photos and later going back and selecting the "best" one, with film I am limited to thirty six exposures total. Each photograph is a practice in meditation: compose, adjust the settings, depress the shutter button, wonder why the shutter didn't fire, panic, realize the lens cap is still on, remove the lens cap, recompose, miss the moment. Getting the scans of the negatives back from my local lab is the closest I get to being an excited eight year old on Christmas morning again. Not all of the photographs work out, but that’s what makes the ones that do truly special. Photography has made me more appreciative of the beauty of the world around me, even beyond the "that would make a great photo" mentality. I find myself stopping to admire shadows and light and colors, even when I don’t have a camera with me. Some of the best memories I have are from photowalks I've taken with friends I met through the hobby. What started out as begrudgingly hiking through forests and fields in order to get a shot has transformed into a deep love of being outside and many wonderful adventures in the natural world. Young Kevin would be appalled. Current Kevin is thankful.” -Kevin Chang See more of Kevin's work and give a follow here!
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