The Decision That Changed My Life

Hi everyone, my name is Tanner Price. I am 22 years old and am pursuing my passion for photography full-time in 2023. I graduated from the Ohio State University in spring of 2022 and spent the summer after graduation decompressing from school and spending time with my family. At the end of the summer, I had my dream job lined up with the Inspiring Children Foundation (ICF) in Las Vegas. ICF is a foundation that helps at-risk youth who struggle with mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression, familial pressures, and more. During 2020-2021 I interned with ICF and I knew I wanted to go back after graduation to work full-time. The Foundation has helped transform my life in innumerable ways. ICF has the most amazing people that I have had the pleasure of working alongside over the past several years. Everyone involved with the Inspiring Children Foundation knows how special it is and all of the people there aren't "like" family, they are family. In August 2022, I set out on a cross-country road trip with my brother to move out to Las Vegas and to see some amazing national parks along the way.

Quinn XCII concert in Cincinnati with the Inspiring Children Foundation

After visiting some of the most beautiful places that I've ever seen (Glacier National Park, Banff National Park, the North Cascades, and many more) and spending an incredible week and a half with my brother and best friend, I made my way to Las Vegas to begin work. Spending time and working alongside my best friends was something I had dreamed of as a kid and I couldn't believe that I was making that dream a reality. Although I was living the dream that my adolescent-self had, I wasn't living and pursuing the passion of mine that had been growing over the last few years.

I did not grow up exploring and adventuring in the outdoors. I grew up involved in and playing as many sports as I could possibly get my hands on. Sports were my first true love and I absolutely loved competing, so my transition into hiking, road-trips, and photography may seem like an interesting and rather strange juxtaposition. If I could pin a moment to the beginning of this transition, it would be seeing a picture of Moraine Lake for the first time. I couldn't believe that such beautiful landscapes existed like that picture and I was instantly hooked not only on the idea of road-trips, but more importantly on the idea of photography.

*Spoiler Alert* I eventually made it to Moraine Lake :)

From the moment I saw Moraine Lake in 2019, I couldn't stop thinking about how I could get there and how I could take a picture of that lake myself. I immediately planned a very ambitious, 33-hour road-trip (one way) from Columbus, Ohio to Banff National Park in Canada for spring break. Unfortunately, as everyone knows, early into 2020 lockdown and the pandemic changed those plans, but the travel and photography bug was strongly engrained in my head.

Fast forward to 2021, I had just spent the past year with the Inspiring Children Foundation in Las Vegas as an intern while also studying asynchronously as a student at Ohio State. I had my car in Las Vegas and needed to drive back to Columbus at the end of the summer to finish my final year of college. With the travel/photography bug still in the back of my mind, I started planning another rather ambitious road trip. My girlfriend Selena and I embarked on a 26-day road trip spanning across the United States. I thought this would be the perfect time for me to see Moraine Lake in person, but due to travel restrictions in Canada, the trip to Banff was once again postponed. Although I didn't make it to Moraine Lake, I was able to see some of the most amazing landscapes in the world and discovered my passion for nature and photography.

Me at Yellowstone on my first road trip

After two pretty extensive road trips in the US over the past couple of summers and an incredible trip to Europe with my parents after graduation (stay tuned for more on these trips), my love and passion for photography, nature, and travel was ignited and couldn't be neglected. Not to mention that less than a week before arriving back in Las Vegas, I was finally able to see and photograph Moraine Lake in person. My love for photography was at an all-time high after this road trip and after seeing Banff National Park for the first time.

My mom and I before my graduation from Ohio State

When I arrived in Las Vegas in September 2022 to begin working for the Inspiring Children Foundation, my heart was conflicted. On one hand, I was beginning work for a cause that I truly believed in while working with my best friends and on the other hand, I was putting my passion for photography and nature on the back-burner. I decided to stick with working for ICF in hopes of being able to balance my two loves and in hopes of finding more clarity on what was the right decision for me and my future. The next few months were some of the most difficult of my life. For the first time, I had two incredible options before me and had to choose between sticking with my current job or pursuing photography full-time. As the months went on, I could feel my heart pulling towards one of the options and the decision became more clear by the end of 2022.

I decided to pursue photography full-time.

This was by far the hardest decision that I've ever had to make. My job with the Inspiring Children Foundation was fulfilling, meaningful, stable, well-paying, and I had the best co-workers and friends that I could ever ask for. I was tasked with choosing between that and betting on myself, my passion, and my ability. Throughout my life, I haven't been used to losing and failure. I had straight A's all throughout high school and college, was successful while playing individual and team sports, and have had healthy friendships during my life. My decision to pursue photography full-time sets me up for certain failure. I will be failing on a daily basis. In the past, I've made decisions based on what I thought I would be successful in and usually avoided failure at all costs, but in doing that, I lost out on numerous opportunities to grow, to learn, and to get better at things that I could have been trying and improving in. No longer will I let my fear of failure stop me from pursuing what I'm passionate about and stop me from learning more about myself and my passion. My choice at the end of the day was not a matter of profession, but was rather a matter of going all in on myself, a matter of persistence despite certain failure, a matter of pushing myself to overcome adversity... a matter of becoming the best version of myself possible.

For the first time in my life, I am not certain or nearly certain that I will succeed. I am entering a heavily saturated field of work being a landscape photographer, Instagram content creator, and now internet blogger. My job description is not set in stone and what I do each day will not be the same. I will be taking pictures, taking videos, writing blogs, recording mini-vlogs, editing content, traveling by myself and with my family/friends, selling pictures, hiking around in nature, learning more about who I am, and most certainly of all failing. When I look back a year from now and reflect on my decision, I know one thing for sure; I will no longer be afraid of failure. I don't know if I will be a successful photographer, content creator, or blogger a year from now. I do know that I will give my best every step of the way and will do everything I can to learn, improve, and grow not only professionally, but as a person.

This is the year I bet on me.

- Tanner Price

Me at Haleakala National Park feeling on top of the world :)