The most artistic it gets
Well, to be honest (which I mostly always am), the pictures I have taken in the past year have been of myself. With things like Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter, pictures of myself on a webcam or phone seem to be the quickest and most egotistical way to communicate with my friends. 
Truly, most of my senior year was having people take pictures of me; sporting events, theatre, yearbook, graduation, senior pictures… all of them of me, taken by someone else. I’ve never felt the need to take pictures in an artistic way. I always had the mindset that if there is someone better at doing what I’m trying to do, let them do it. My friend Tory was the photographer, so I became the writer. Now, looking back at my whole high school career, there was a time when I had to be the photographer, when I had to document where no one else could. This was on my exchange in Germany. Prepare yourself for a lot of anecdotes from Germany, because that’s what is in store from me this semester. Truthfully Germany and camp are my only outlets where I have any personal documentation of my experiences.
Starting at the beginning, as these things usually do, I would say that I began taking pictures of animals. Even now going to the zoo gets me at least a hundred pictures and for no reason. Those animals aren’t going anywhere, they’re not particularly special memories, so why do I take pictures of them? I’m an animal lover, I guess. I want to be able to see them wherever and know that I am the one that photographed them. I will never understand this thought process; National Geographic has breathtaking photos of every animal in the world and yet I still insist on taking 5 blurry pictures of a polar bear through a dirty glass window. Riddle me that.
When I started taking pictures at camp, where I grew up being a camper and now where I live, everything meant a lot to me. It is a place that I love, so every nook and cranny seemed to have some sort of significance.
Now, this is when I started trying to be artsy- Note to self: Just because you take a picture of a leaf up close doesn’t mean you’re Ansel Adams. Some of the pictures did turn out pretty cool, like the ones I took of the horses that we had at camp. I knew the horses really well because that is where I spent a lot of my time in the summer. In this way, my obsession with animals continued. I did take other pictures where light and colors seemed to highlight the places at camp that I adored, but I always credit those shots to nature. I’ve never felt that anything I do can make an image more beautiful than the real thing. I gave up in Germany because I knew no images could capture the way I felt in a certain place or time. As much as I wanted to document my experiences, photos alone could never really cut it.
I took a LOT of photos in Germany. This is when I realized that I am very much a landscape photographer. As I mentioned before, I’ve always been a fan of Ansel Adams and the way he captured nature with the simplest of means. Many of my pictures from Germany tried to capture as much of the place I was in as possible.
I like how you break down different parts of your life into different styles of photography. Many people our age focus on photos of themselves, and this trend has become even stronger with the “Photos of Me” feature on Facebook. I can relate to both the pictures of camp, where I used to take the most unimportant photos just to remember it, and the pictures of a trip. There is something about being in another place that makes you want to capture every moment, especially when you can’t revisit the experience. Your more artsy pictures remind me of how you don’t have to be ‘artsy’ to take those shots- as long as we remember to point the camera at objects instead of always people, we can create amazing photos without even meaning to.
I agree with a lot of what you said in this post. The main reason I never took all that many pictures was because other, better photographers were willing to take pictures of me doing whatever it was. And when I do take pictures, snapchat, facebook and Instagram do seem to take a good amount of my picture taking. And I feel you on the zoo anecdote, always come away with a bunch of non-exciting photos.