Through My Father's Lens.

Hello, my name is Isaiah, and I'm asking my community to help me take the next step into doing photography full-time and pursuing my passions.

My photo business will be centered around three things;

1. helping local businesses and organizations communicate what they do to their customers and the public.

2. Documenting gatherings and special occasions, as well as the everyday ins and outs of family life that folks often don't have the time or sensitivity to capture, and then delivering prints to accompany those photos.

3. Event work (basketball games, festivals, ceremonies, etc.)

I need help making this a full-time thing; I want to give the folks of Cincinnati photos that capture what we love most about the ones we cherish, Photos for your mother, photos for ya grandma's fridge. Prints can be passed down for generations; as a society, we've gotten away from printing photos. I want the kids growing up today to have the same experiences I did, reminiscing with my mom as we went through my dad's old family

photos.

My love for photography started with my father, who

for the first five years of my life documented everything our family did and printed those photos out for us to have in the future. Also, my grandfather gave me a camera at the start of the pandemic to help document the homeless outreach he and his ministry have been doing for years.

As I taught myself more about using a camera during the lockdown, it gave me new insight into what my father was attempting to do before he passed. That desire to understand him turned into a passion for photography in its own right. As soon as I realized this was something I couldn't live without, I gave up my pursuits of playing basketball professionally and switched focus to photography.

I got into the Art Academy of Cincinnati and spent 2021 preparing for school in the fall. After finishing the first semester, I realized I didn't have the means to support myself financially. I took a year off and am currently the scholar in residence at Manifest Drawing Center. Through Manifest and a couple

other organizations around the city, I've had the opportunity to teach photography, and I have found that's something I want to pursue when I finish school.

I started taking on paid work in 2021, and since then, I've shot for the Cincinnati Art Museum and Paloozanoire, I've done events at the Freedom Center and a lot of local high schools through ARTE,

I've shot at Cinema0TR and done a lot of family events and portrait sessions on top of that.