The first time I felt the weight of a camera in my hands, the smell and coolness of the metal body, I knew it was a vice in the making. Lying with my back against the dirt in the early Fall, the lens of my grandfather’s camera pointed upwards into the overhanging branches to capture the changing of the leaves using different depths of field, I knew that no matter who or what I grew up to be, there would always be a camera involved.

When I left my hometown of Sandpoint, Idaho at age 18, my very first purchase was a digital camera; a shoddy, low quality 3.1megapixel by some brand that doesn’t even exist anymore. Far from my dreams of owning a vintage Nikon like my grandfather’s (a dream that has since been attained), but affordable on the budget of a freshman in college.

It wasn’t long before I learned that moving away from home doesn’t automatically make you any braver in the social aspects of life. Hiding behind a rectangular plastic casing and seeing the world through a tiny viewfinder became my comfort. Soon my camera taught me that watching life unfold through the viewfinder forces you to see things in a way not everyone would...a special way the lights dance on the surface of an object, or how shadows can play off the angles of a face normally considered plain and suddenly become astoundingly beautiful. A certain center of focus can take something unpleasant and show you the hidden treasures you would have missed otherwise.

Over the years, I’ve learned to peak out occasionally from behind my vice and squeak a small hello. Maybe I am becoming braver. In any case, whatever guts I have I owe to the world as seen through the viewfinder.

                                                                         -Miya Johanna Edwards