I’ve loved photography since I can remember. I remember my very first time taking photos on a school trip to Europe in 2002, with a tiny point and shoot Sony camera. Let’s just say that amateur photography has come a very long way over the past 20 or so years.
London in 2003. I didn’t take the picture, but the quality of point and shoot cameras left a lot to be desired
My journey continued when I finally saved up enough to buy a Canon Rebel XSI. These days you can get one with a lens for around $100, but back then, it was quite the investment for a kid just out of high school. Once I practiced a lot (and built up the courage), I decided to get into portrait and wedding photography, and eventually moved onto a full-frame Canon 5D Mk II. Those photos were much better quality and while I enjoyed doing weddings, the production aspect of photography (editing, color correction, etc) was very time consuming. Lightroom was only a few years old backed then, and lacked some of the functionality that it has now, so most of my editing was done manually in Photoshop (I eventually learned how to do batch editing on Photoshop, but it was Lightroom that became the game changer when I could save and apply presets to dozens of photos at the same time).
One of the things I learned from doing photography for so long was that I also loved architecture, and slowly began to develop my graphic design skills at the same time. Because of limited resources, I found that YouTube was the best place to learn about Photoshop, After Effects and Adobe Premiere. To this day, I still value people who came up the same way I did - by self-teaching. My passion for photography continued, though it took a pause while I tried to develop my skills in design, and that’s when I landed my first graphic design job at Verizon in 2009. I was part of the Local Marketing team and did posters, emails, banners, and internal communications - and video editing was a big part of that.
Fast forward to today, and my passion for photography continues. My wife and I love to travel, and I recently was able to purchase a Leica Q2 Reporter and bring it Europe. I had always wanted to share my photos with the world, but lack of knowledge led to me thinking that I would first have to get the prints made, then keep all the inventory and manually ship it out. Until I learned about print-on-demand. And this allowed me to finally realize one of my childhood passions and launch a web shop through Shopify.
Parisian evening shot on Leica Q2
I had always known that it isn’t the quality of camera that makes you a great photographer, but the creative eye you have the your personal tastes that matter. Do I think I’m the best photographer out there? I don’t have that much hubris. But I do believe in the value of producing work you’re proud of and having a creative outlet.
I’ve had this saying I thought of a long time ago, “pretty decent”, and decided to name the store that. Why? Because I tend to think of myself as a jack of all trades rather than a specialist. It’s also a play off a running joke from a movie I saw a while back, where one of the characters wears a shirt that’s “extra medium”. In a way, that’s how I view my photography skills. I’m not “medium” or “large”, but at some point in-between, better than decent.
I’m not expecting to make a killing off the store, instead what I’m looking forward to is learning more about running an e-commerce site, managing ads, and essentially the ins-and-outs of running a small business. Already I’ve launched an instagram page where I’ll be running promotions and most of the marketing, and Google Ads, Pinterest, and Meta Ads are already in the works. I don’t expect it to take off, but as I learned from one of my finance professors, “A business that can cover its own costs is worth pursuing”. If you have enough interest and your work becomes self-sustaining, then a bit of investment in marketing can make you profitable.
I plan on releasing more photos in the future, but decided to focus in on an initial batch to get the hang of things and quickly set the store up. I also plan on doing more architectural photography from my travels which can then live on the site as prints.
If you’d like to shop the prints, you can visit the PrettyDecent Supply shop here.