How Practicing My Favorite Hobby Have Changed My Life

Hey there Steemiters ! My name is Reda, Im a crypto and a car freak studying economics and living in the city of love Paris. I have discovered Steemit by analyzing each crypto on coinmarketcap.com in order to find a good opportunity of investment and I felt on Steemit two months ago and WOAW ! I would never have thaught during the moment of the discovery that we would go that far ! But once I understood the principles of Steemit I knew I did a huge discovery and Im very proud to be a part of it ! Im on the platform since may and Im known for the series « Which Crypto To Invest In » ( don't miss my last episode if you want to make some bucks ;) ) I finally decided to kinda introduce myself but it will be more about my two passions than me.

Here I am in an Aston Martin DBS, James Bonding and checking my photos inside the car

A Short Story About How I Have Entered The World of Car Photography

It all began when I had my first computer back in 2008 ( hey there Im a caveman ! ) and the liberty to explore the internet. The first thing I searched for were car wallpapers and I was amazed by the beauty, power coming from the photos I saw, I was so amazed that I had a 200 wallpapers photo stock !
Some weeks after I made my wallpaper collection, I decided to go out to see some cars. I knew that I couldn’t reach the level of the photos I saw but I wanted at least to see these marvelous engineering pieces of art by myself. I began by taking some Ferrari’s with an iPhone 3G, the quality wasn’t that bad.
Years after that I was still capturing moments only with a phone but it was an iPhone 5S which was way better than the 3G, I also knew how to better frame my photos, from which angle to take the car to make it more aggressive, desirable, etc then I wanted to share my photos with the world and thats how my Instagram adventure debuted.
614 Photos posted later, I have now more than 5000 subscribers on Instagram.
I was very happy to see that much people liking my work, what I do share with them on Instagram but I felt like I was missing something. It wasn’t really photography as you cannot put the whole photo if you want more people to like your photos. As I used to often check my Facebook news feed I frequently fell on incredible car photos like Gunther Raupp makes, it made me want to publish 16:9 frame photos where you can see the whole composition, feel the ambiance coming from the photo like if it was real. Thus I started my Facebook photography page and it works quite well now ! It did encourage me to post better photos and to improve my photography skills. By the way, I hope you will like my work !

Taking Photographies in The Street Made Me More Confident

I have to admit that Im an introvert person and shy which didn’t helped me to reach most of my goals but street photography changed it, at least a bit. When I first started taking photos of cars in the street people come to me and ask me :
« Who’s in the car ? »

I answered that I took the picture for the car not for the people, they told me thats ridiculous and pointless. I didn’t even bothered answering and walked my way to find another supercars. I love cars and Im sharing the photos I have took of them to share them with the world, why would this be ridiculous ? This was the moment I understood that people’s opinion should never matter to help you decide to do what you want. Considering this, Im now fearing less people judgement as I used to be agoraphobic ( I still am but less than before ).

It Also Made Me More Sociable

Moreover It also helped to become more social as I saw guys like me taking car photos so I was more motivated to talk to other people I didn’t know as we have the same interest. In fact I had more fun with them than anyone outside the car world, I have met one of my best friend during summer when Arab cars invades Europe, we had good times together I travelled with him through the country to go to awesome car meetings, here’s some photos of the trip we had : Mercedes A45 AMG vs Abarth 595 , Chasing a Porsche in the highway , Porsche’s, Ferrari’s and people admiring
It also got me to know people who did helped me to get better at photography as they were way more experienced. They shared with me their advices, experiences, tips to get photos that stands out from the others and thus avoiding being mainstream. Another thing I learned thanks to car photography was that being sociable helps you enhance yourself ( your skills improves, your self esteem increases as you get to better know people ).

Furthermore it pushed me to build relations with people at my college, I hang out more with them we work together more often than I used to work alone before and it made me have better grades now thanks to collaboration.

An Advice to People Who Used to Be Like Me

So if you are shy with people and you want to go forward I advise you to find your way, to discover yourself a passion, then practice alone for sometime and then try to find a group who shares the same interest as you, you will see all the benefits it will bring you in life :) !

By the way, as there are many catfishes on Steemit, I prefer to do a video so nobody could have a doubt about my identity