One simple photo changed my life.

Alexa Kelly Contributor

One day at lunch my friends and I decided to go by the lake in Fort Frances, teenagers in Fort Frances call this lake "the Cove" I was sitting up on a rock watching the water wash up against the rocks, and I noticed Daniel on a rock. It looked so beautiful... the reflection of the clouds on the lake made the whole picture.

The whole house was silent where you couldn't hear anything, not even a mouse. The only thing you could hear was "drip, drip, drip". It didn't wake anyone up but me. I turned the light on and took over 40 pictures to finally get a perfect picture of a midnight water drop.

My name is Alexa Kelly, I am 15 years old and I'm currently attending Hammarskjold High School in Thunder Bay, ON. I have been trying to find a clever way to start off this paragraph for days but I couldn't seem to. So to start off, I spent some of my childhood in Sabaskong also known as "Ojibways of Onigaming First Nation." Living on the reserve, it was the best time of my life. I was rarely inside. Memories I have were always of outside playing with my friends; whether it be playing tag in the bush, swimming at the lake, jumping off the cliff swimming (which was exhilarating) or playing at the park with more of my friends. But soon we were on the road to new places, a road where I had to make new friends and to get use to the tall buildings of city life around me. That was when I discovered a new passion; my love of photography.

It was one day in Grade 7, I decided I wanted a camera like the ones that professional photographers have but my parents started me off with a small Kodak camera. I was in love with it. I didn't take amazing pictures yet but I was still learning. At first, photography wasn't a huge part of my life like it is now. Until I saw a dandelion that looked perfect in my eyes. I wanted to capture that perfect flower in a photograph. The photo turned out to be amazing. 12 to 13 year olds usually don't have a clue of what they want to do with their life, how they want to lead it, or know which path to follow that will lead to success. In Grade 7 neither did I but what I did know was that I wanted to capture the things that people see as ordinary and make them see it through my eyes.

"One of the things that I love about photography is how it changed the way I look at the world. Because of photography, I'm always looking at light, color and backgrounds, thinking about how I might use them in a photo. It's also made me more observant and more aware." I'm not too sure who said this. I read this on a Nikon app on my iPod, but this quote explains exactly how photography has changed my life, how much of an impact it made on me, how I cannot live without photography. Photography is my passion. Here are some of my photos that I want to share with you.