My Story
"What is a wawar?"
This is not a wawar. This is an anhinga.
This is me. Hi! I’m Darren!
It’s a question I hear a lot. The truth is, Wawar was a childhood nickname. (It’s a long story.) So let’s move on to something else.
When I first started taking pictures, I had a Canon Rebel T3i. I didn’t know what I was doing and would shoot on Auto, but I was always so excited when I managed to get a good shot. I’d play around with some of the other automatic modes on the dial and when I actually got something good I was so proud that I would print it and hang it up somewhere in the house.
A very early picture I took when I had no idea what I was doing. I got lucky.
Since then I’ve learned a lot more, I’ve done a lot of reading and practicing, I’ve spent a lot of time working in Lightroom and Photoshop, and I’ve upgraded my gear. I would like to believe that I’ve gotten a lot better and the quality shows in my work. I still try to maintain that spirit of the old days, though, the wandering that led me to just shoot whatever looked good and not worry about whether I had the right filter on the camera or which f-stop I should be using.
I took this in 2022 at Meritt Island Wildlife Refuge. I think it’s better. You might disagree.
Photography is best when it shows us something we don’t normally get to see. It may be something we look at every day, but we’re seeing it in a new way. Photographs get to freeze a moment in time and keep it there forever. I never want to limit myself to just one type of moment or just one style. The world is full of things to see and I want to capture it all and share it with you.