About six years ago, middle-schooler Sam Delaware started taking photos.

Today, college student Sam Delaware has been named Youth Photographer of the Year.

It hasn’t always been easy — especially running a photography business as a teenager. But what started out as a way to document a science project has turned into a consuming passion.  

Name: Sam Delaware

Age: 19

Hometown: Durham

School/major: Pacific Union College, Angwin, Calif. Studying photography.

Job: Teaching assistant during the school year with occasional freelance jobs as they pop up — summers are always a mystery.

What sparked your interest in photography? It was a slow progression. “Back in the day” I needed pictures for a middle school science fair project, picked up a camera, and the interest has gradually intensified from there to what it is now. It was originally just a way to record the things I was involved in at the time, but then the passion grew for the medium itself, seeing photography as both an art and a tool to document.

How old were you? I had to be about 11 or 12.

What was your first camera? One of Canon’s first digital Rebels.

What do you use now? A Mamiya 7 II, a medium-format film camera.

What are your favorite types of photographs to take? It’s hard to say, mainly because I feel that my voice as a photographer is still very much growing, but photographs of people have continued to hold my interest. If I had to choose, it would be somewhere in the realm of (contemporary) documentary photography, which is most often centered around portraits of people in their respective environments.

I understand you’ve shot professionally. What’s it like to run your own business as a teenager? It’s tough. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it’s not worth it as a young artist, but there is something to say about the business aspect suffocating the creative aspect, but that’s just me. If anything, it was a time that taught me what I did and what I didn’t want in a photographic career, and for that reason, I can say that it definitely wasn’t wasted time.

I heard you were named Youth Photographer of the Year 2016 by the World Photography Organization. Congrats! How did that come about? Thanks! The World Photography Organization hosts an annual awards program dedicated both to photographers who shoot professionally and ones just emerging. The first few images are free to submit and I thought I’d give it a go, not thinking much of it at the time (December 2015). Then a phone call came (after forgetting I had entered a few months previously) in February from a woman with a British accent stating that I had won Youth Photographer of the Year for 2016, but I had to keep quiet until April when the awards ceremony took place in London. After a few seemingly endless months, I hopped on a plane in California and 10 hours later I was in the UK for the awards.

Tell me about the photo that you won with. The photograph itself is a rather simple portrait of my sister peering out of a window at our home. It would be nice to have a profound backstory, but the image itself was quite spontaneous; the light was great and the rest just fell together. Reflecting back on the image after some time, I could see it having symbolism — a way of expressing the nostalgia I was feeling after some time away from my family.

How was London? Well worth the mountain of work I had waiting for me back at school. My time was limited to just under a week, the majority of which was scheduled out for me, so I only had a day to hit some of the things/museums I was eager to see. It was short but sweet. The networking was great — I met some big hitters in the photojournalism/documentary world and even got to meet a few emerging photographers like myself as well.

What do you have for upcoming projects? I have two that I’m actively working on now, one out West and the other here in Maine, both very much at the beginning stages. The project in California centers around a town called Clearlake, a town originally supposed to be a destination like Tahoe or Napa that has slowly fallen into poverty instead. The project in Maine is an exploration into the decline of its mill era, its people and its towns.

What’s your favorite photograph of yours? A fairly recent portrait of a homeless couple in Clearlake, Calif.

What’s your favorite photo taken by someone else? Anything from Stephen Shore’s “Uncommon Places.”

Cell phone cameras – the best thing ever or people need to stop? I mean, art is art. I think it boils down to intention. I would say, however, that photography now more than ever needs to be intentional. With phone cameras, photographs that speak to any deliberate or calculated attempt by the person taking the photo are few and far between, and it only has a negative aspect to the way photography is becoming globally perceived.

One way everyone can take better photos: A little simplicity goes a long way.

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