If you ask me now, I would probably answer this way:
Photography is a way of holding on to the beauty of a moment.
Whether that moment becomes something lasting, or slowly disappears with time.
It sounds simple when I write it like this.
But for me, this was not an answer I understood from the beginning.
In one sense, photography was the starting point for many things in my life.
It was one of the reasons I entered portrait photography, events, the entertainment side of the industry, and later, even Taiwan-Japan photography exchange.
But from another angle, photography was also the place where my passion once burned out.
I was not someone who clearly knew from the start that I loved photography.
I was not the kind of child who carried a camera everywhere, taking pictures of flowers, streets, family members, and naturally grew into this path.
When I really trace it back, the beginning was much more accidental.
It happened around the time I was about to graduate from kindergarten.
Our homeroom teacher loved taking photos. Since it was graduation season, she often carried a camera around, trying to leave some memories for the class. Everyone liked taking photos with her too, so the atmosphere was always lively.
One day, she asked a few students to help press the shutter.
After trying several classmates, she noticed that I seemed to be the only one who could take the photo properly every time.
The photo was not tilted.
Nobody’s face was cut off.
The composition somehow looked right.
Looking back now, it was probably just instinct.
At that age, I had no idea what composition meant. I did not know what I had done well. I only framed what I saw and pressed the shutter.
But my teacher praised me.
To her, it may have been just a small word of encouragement.
But to a child, something like that stays.
I will not say that moment decided my life.
That would be too dramatic.
But if I had to find the earliest seed, it was probably planted there.
It just stayed asleep for a very long time.
After kindergarten, all the way until my final year of high school, I barely picked up a camera again.
Not a DSLR.
Not even the simple point-and-shoot cameras people used to call “foolproof cameras” in Taiwan.
So if someone asks how I entered portrait photography, or later ended up in the photography entertainment circle, I can only say it was never planned.
It was more like one random giveaway that pushed me into a world I had never imagined.
Back then, I followed quite a few models and online personalities on Facebook.
Some of them promoted mobile games. Some worked with brands. Many of them held comment-to-win giveaways.
The reason I followed them at first was simple. I wanted to join those giveaways.
But those posts always had a lot of fans.
Every time I left a comment, I knew very well that I was probably just one of many people who would not win.
Then one time, a motorcycle brand held a giveaway.
The prize was a red breathable T-shirt.
I won.
The prize itself was not a big deal.
But it led to a series of things I had never expected.
Because I won that giveaway, I was invited into a fan group.
And it was in that group that I first learned there was something called a group photo session.
That was also where I met someone who would later have a deep influence on me.
At the time, he was already the owner of a photography company with three studios.
Looking back now, that fan group was where my portrait photography truly began.
At first, I did not think too much about it.
I simply felt that people have beautiful moments.
If I could capture those moments and share them with others, that seemed good enough.
So I started to teach myself.
How to shoot.
How to retouch.
How to read light.
How to make a person look more natural in the frame.
How to keep the atmosphere of one brief moment in a photo.
That period was actually very pure.
I did not carry much pressure. I did not think about how far I had to go.
If the next photo was a little better than the last one, that was enough.
Sometimes, when I took a photo I liked, I would look at it again and again.
Not because I thought I was great.
More because I felt, so I can actually make someone look this good too.
Back then, photography felt like a form of discovery.
Discovering light.
Discovering expression.
And discovering that maybe I really did like doing this.
But later, things slowly changed.
I began to realize that if a photo was good enough, a model or influencer might use it in a post.
Sometimes, it could even become the photo used for a sponsored post.
For me at that time, this was a strong kind of stimulation.
It meant my work was not only for myself to look at.
It could be seen by more people.
It could even make people in the circle notice me.
For someone who had just started shooting, and who was still only in his final year of high school, that sense of achievement was very direct.
It was even a little addictive.
In just a few months, I started shooting a lot.
I also became almost obsessive about learning retouching and editing.
I cared about whether the photo was good enough.
Whether it was clean enough.
Whether the skin tone looked right.
Whether the lighting was beautiful.
Whether the whole image had reached the standard where it could be used.
Later, my photos really did begin to appear in posts by different models and influencers.
By all logic, that should have made me happy.
After all, I had only just started.
And I was still a high school student.
But things were not as simple as I imagined.
Without noticing it, I started treating photography like work.
Every time I shot, I wanted to deliver photos that could be seen and used.
Every time I retouched, I wanted the result to be cleaner, more polished, and closer to what people liked.
I worked hard.
And I did improve quickly.
During that period, my control over shooting, retouching, and lighting improved a lot.
If I only look at technique, that may have been the fastest I ever improved.
But the cost was also clear.
I started losing the simple feeling I once had when taking photos.
Photos were no longer just moments I wanted to keep.
They had to match the model’s preferences.
They had to match what fans liked.
They had to fit the kind of look that would get attention on social media.
They had to meet some invisible standard of what everyone considered beautiful.
Toward the end, my thoughts about photography had almost been reduced to a few questions:
Is this photo good enough to be used?
Is it good enough to be seen?
Is it close enough to what most people like?
That was not photography’s fault.
But at the time, I was definitely being pushed around by those standards.
I shot more and more. I retouched more and more. And I became less and less sure what I was really photographing.
That state continued until my second year of university.
By then, my mental state had reached a limit.
It was not just ordinary tiredness.
Whenever I thought about that circle, about shooting, retouching, posting, comparing, being used or not being used, I felt a deep exhaustion.
So I made a decision that was sudden, but necessary.
I cut off my connection with that circle.
I stopped interacting with the people and things related to it.
I stopped shooting.
I stopped letting myself stay in that environment.
At that time, I did not think of it in any beautiful way.
It was not something like, I need to reorganize my life.
It was closer to this:
I needed to get away first.
Because if I had stayed there any longer, I probably would have ended up hating photography completely.
So I stopped.
For a while, I deliberately kept my distance from photography.
I also gave myself time to settle down.
But back then, I did not know whether I would ever return to photography again.
The time I really picked up a camera again was the year I graduated from university.
Through a chance opportunity, I came into contact with wedding photography.
I also joined a well-known wedding photography team.
To be honest, at first I was not sure whether I could adapt again.
After all, I had already left portrait photography for some time.
And wedding photography was completely different from the kind of shooting I had been used to.
It was not inside a studio.
It was not about setting up the light, expression, and pose, then taking time to shoot slowly.
There were no second takes.
On a wedding day, every scene is gone once it is missed.
The couple entering the venue.
The look in the parents’ eyes.
Friends laughing.
The chaos during toasts.
The quietness of the ceremony.
The tired but satisfied faces near the end.
Those scenes were not arranged as carefully as portrait photography.
Many times, they were even a little messy.
But because of that, they felt real.
At wedding venues, I slowly realized that photography is not only about making one person look beautiful.
It can also be about helping a group of people keep the emotions of that day.
For the couple, it may be one of the most important days of their lives.
For the family, it may be the moment their child steps into another stage of life.
For friends, it may become a set of photos that brings back the atmosphere of that day many years later.
I used to care a lot about whether a photo looked beautiful enough.
But in wedding photography, I began to care more about whether the photo had kept that moment.
That feeling was very different.
Shooting weddings is exhausting.
From morning to night, the body really does get tired.
Sometimes, after returning home, I did not even feel like speaking.
But inside, I felt full.
Because I knew those photos were not just for likes.
They were not just for someone to post online.
Many years later, a family might open them again.
By then, some relationships may have changed.
Some people may no longer be around.
Some memories may have become blurry.
But at least in those photos, that day truly existed.
The smiles, the tears, the embraces were all real.
That slowly repaired my feeling toward photography.
I began to feel again that photography has meaning.
Not because it can bring exposure, and not because it can satisfy popular taste.
But because it really can leave certain pieces of time behind.
After that, through wedding photography, I recorded the good moments between couples, families, and friends.
And through that process, I slowly repaired myself as well.
I will not say I have completely returned to the pure state I had at the beginning.
That is probably impossible.
After going through certain things, the way a person looks at photography will change.
At first, I took photos because I wanted to make people look beautiful.
Later, I took photos because I wanted my work to be seen.
After that, I left photography because I could no longer bear the feeling of being pushed forward by standards all the time.
Now, I hope I can photograph the things that really existed in that moment.
Whether that beauty lasts in the future or not.
Whether that relationship stays the same forever or not.
Whether the people in the photo will still stand together like that many years later or not.
At least, at the moment I press the shutter, it is real.
So if someone asks me now what photography means to me, I would probably still answer:
Photography is a way of holding on to the beauty of a moment.
Whether that moment becomes something lasting, or slowly disappears with time.
And the reason I am still willing to pick up a camera now is probably because I am no longer shooting only to make my photos seen.
I just want to keep the moments that deserve to be kept.