michelejinkins · 18

Hi! My name is May, I'm 18, and I'm a first-year student. I got into photography — I've always dreamed of capturing moments that no one else notices, telling stories without words, and staying behind the scenes, even though sometimes I really want to step into the frame myself. Studying at university is nothing like school. There’s no strict control, but there’s this huge freedom that can sometimes feel scary. You decide for yourself whether to wake up at six in the morning for the golden hour, finish a project at night, or just wander around the city with your camera. Sometimes I feel completely grown up. Other times, I feel like a little woman who’s been let out into the big world with the words: “Go shoot, try, don’t be afraid.” I love mornings on campus — when the light is still soft, the shadows are long, and sleepy students wander along the paths with coffee in their hands. In my bag there’s always my camera, a notebook for notes, a charged battery, and a flash drive full of thousands of unedited shots. I think I’m one of those romantics who believes that one right frame can say more than a thousand words. Sometimes I get tired — from deadlines, from searching for that perfect composition, from my eyes refusing to focus after another night of editing. But then someone stops by my work at the student exhibition, or a teacher quietly says, “You know how to see light where others only see shadow,” — and everything inside me lights up again. I’m 18, I’m a student, I still don’t know almost anything, but I desperately want to learn. I’m learning to watch, to feel, to make mistakes, to fall in love with people and moments, and not to lose my own picture of the world. Because this is only the beginning. And it’s mine.