born

winter 2010: my first winter since i was three. we had recently moved to the netherlands. i was new to the dutch school system, the thousand students, the teachers, the language, the weather. i was intimidated, yet i felt like i had to be brave to prove myself. one day i conjured up the courage to ask beracha if i could take her picture sometime. she said yes. i had already learned from being in class with her that she was kind and a soft-spoken person, with eyes that smiled when she laughed. it was a cold wintery day when we rode our bicycles back to her house. her brother offered to let me use his lens (50mm f/1.4). any lens would have been better than the one i owned, so i was happy to say yes. we walked to the forest across from her house. trudging through the snow, the warm sunlight touched our skin as we looked for the perfect scene. the light leaking in through the branches was more perfect than i could have envisioned. so there we stopped and the magic began. to be honest, i had no clue what i was doing. i was completely unfamiliar with the lens. "what's a light-meter, iso, aperture" i would have asked then. i was going on instinct. it was as though i was opening my eyes for the first time, seeing colors and smiles. discovering what i could do, what i could capture with a simple click. maybe i can claim now, that in this very moment, between the sun's warmth and the winter air, my love for photography was born.