“Ever since I was little I had an interest in taking photos,” said freshman Caden Carlson. As he started to get older, he would start to take photos on his phone, and he started to love to take pictures of things that involved nature, such as landscapes, flowers, trees, and rivers.

Carlson would always show his photos to his grandma, and of course she always loved them. She loved taking photos too, and the camera that he uses most often actually belongs to her. “We have always been close,” he says. “I have always enjoyed spending time with her, doing things like taking pictures or playing games.” One of his favorite memories was when she got him a photography book for Christmas so that he could learn all about cameras and how they worked because she knew how much he wanted one when he got older.

Carlson doesn’t know exactly who or what he wants to be when he graduates high school and gets older, but he definitely knows one thing: that he wants to be a photographer and travel the world taking pictures. “Especially to New York City,” he says.