What you are seeing here is one of the hundreds of B/W photographs I took in 1985(?) from Quangdong where my grandma lived; I completely forgot when. But the timing of when this photograph was taken does not matter.

What matters is I remember I used to have a strong passion in Photography. What matters is I could feel my heart aching. I can remember how much I used to be passionate about taking photographs since 1979.  My mentor said I was talented.

For years I had spent hours and hours inside a darkroom working under a dimmed red safe light. Those equipment you have probably seen in old movies and which was the traditional way of B/W photo processing. I can still recall the strong smell of the darkroom with chemicals, HC110 solution to process B/W film, D76 to process B/W prints, fixer to fix the image...  with 4 trays of solutions. Those were the days. Old days. Old days.

Did I ever use my photo skills to make a living? Yes, I did as a reporter.

Did I ever make it the way I wanted be? No. I got to pay bills.  Bye bye my photography career in 1990.

However, I gave it one more try by taking classes to learn artifical lighting techniques. I had worked for professional photographer as photo-assistant, making $80 a day on call. More hours were spent in the darkroom and more unfruitful attempts. I had put together a portfolio of my studio shots. Yet effort was in vain.

I ended up learning and using Photoshop back in 1993 version 2.0. I abandoned B/W Photography for good as I needed to make a living. Bye bye Photography. I became an production artist instead. Not bad. However, many years later, I even lost my portfolio; maybe it was a meant to be.

What has left after so many years of hard work now is a ton of B/W negatives and color slides which were never looked at again...

The search for art direction and a strong desire to become an artist are still haunting me. I believe I can. It is not easy. I am trying. I have not given up.... One day. One day.

-Photos by Miaomiao Mia. © 2010 Miaomiao Mia. All Right Reserved.

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