Firstly, I want to share the love and wish everyone a great Valentine’s Day. Whether you are spending it with your significant other, or if that significant other is yourself I wish you all a special day. This website was built from love so it is befitting that love is the theme for this post, that is, the love of creating art and modelling, as well as sharing a little about me.
Having always highly valued creativity throughout my childhood, I started my love affair with the fashion modeling world in 2002. There are people who enter modelling for pretty out there for a variety of reasons such as for money, travel, meeting new people, being involved in the creative process, or simply for ego. My reason came from a different place that not many people actually know about because I haven’t shared the story before, only to close friends, but I am sharing it with you.
It came from, ironically, since when we are talking about Valentine’s Day, from a relationship breakup – my first and only partner to date actually. I won’t go into the sappiness of all the details but at the end of that relationship I felt lost, like I was out of touch with who I was as a person and what I wanted for my future because previously my mind was set on spending my future with this person. It was pretty naïve of me when I reflect back on that experience but, I’m extremely grateful that I went through that experience because it directed me on a path to where I am today.
After the breakup, I was on a journey of finding myself again. I had volunteered my time to numerous charity and not-for-profit organizations, ranging from youth advocacy to creative projects and events, to meet new people, learn new skills and to feel like I was making an impact to this world, as many as I could manage to keep myself so busy to drown the feeling of heartbreak.
From these organizations, it was a matter of being in the right place and the right time when they asked for models to be featured on community campaign posters, I put my hand up, I wanted to help out. I had such great experiences modeling for these shoots that I wanted to do, and once again I was in the right place, when a photography studio set up a pop-up booth at my local shopping mall, offering a promotional photo package. Which I thought why not? That too was a great experience and it became part of my first professional modeling portfolio. I posted these pictures online, such as Myspace, when it was popular, and other photographers saw them and contacted me to shoot with them.
I’d post the photos from these shoots online and then other photographers noticed them and then they asked me to shoot with them. It was like a domino effect and shoot after shoot, my portfolio got stronger but what I also discovered was that with every photo I learned something new about myself. Each photographer brought out and captured a different perspective of me and so I was able to see different sides of my personality in different photos that I didn’t realize I possessed before and so the more shoots I did the more pieces of the puzzle formed for self-discovery.
No longer was I held back by what people said or thought about me, I was discovering for myself who I really was inside and what I was capable of, my potential, for the first time in my life.
And that’s the story of how I got started my journey into modelling and my own self-discovery. Hope that wasn’t too deep and personal for everyone, but my focus in my life is to live an inspired life and to inspire others and I’ve realized I’m not able to do so without sharing my story. Stay tuned for my next post, sticking to the Valentine’s theme, which details my love for photography.
You must be logged in to post a comment.