For the past few years, my Instagram bio has read "chasing light." I doubt I'm the first to put those words together, I believe it's a saying that's floated around the photographer world for ages. But over the years, it's become my personal tagline of sort. A lot of creatives I know have a few words that represent them. Billy Quach has "get the shot," Allison Rikard has "capture joy." For me, it's "chasing light."
The words first came to me the summer before my freshman year at UNC, when I was still pretty new to the world of photography and cinematography. I was spending my last summer before college relishing the little time I had left with my high school friends. I brought my camera with me to a couple games we attended just as fans, first a Columbus Crew game and then a Cincinnati Reds one. I only shot a few photos in total across the matches, but one commonality stuck out to me in both that I hadn't really noticed before- the interplay between light and the lack thereof.
These were the first moments where I truly started paying attention to how light shaped images and composition, and how one could capture and manipulate not only the light the world gives us, but the lack of it too. In the years since, it's manifested in my work whenever it can. Everything is usually evenly-lit in sports, but in the moments it's not, I've gotten some of my favorite shots. That contrast between light and dark, the ways it shapes our frames and guides the stories we tell, has become "chasing light."
I can't wait to see where the light takes me.
