*click*

“Ahh there’s a good one,” Jonathan Mizaur said.

Mizaur, a senior at Prep, is a self-taught student photographer and he didn’t think much of photography until he actually got behind one and snapped his first photo.

“I first started to be dedicated to photography about 10 months ago; the start of last summer,” Mizaur said.

Once Mizaur stopped playing sports in high school, he told himself to that he needed to find something to do to keep his attention and to keep him active.

“I was going to Wyoming during the spring and I took my dad’s camera to keep me busy,” Mizaur said. “I had a good time with it so I started to get more involved with it and more interested in it.”

After that trip, Mizaur wanted to keep taking photos and expand his horizon. Mizaur saw that Prep was taking a trip to Italy over spring break and knew that was the perfect opportunity to take photos in another country.

“It was a really complex trip, we went to multiple places including: Rome, Naples, Sorrento, Pompeii, and Sicily.” Mizaur said. “The whole trip was really awe-inspiring and solidified the fact that I want to do travel photography.”

Traveling to Italy was not as expensive as it would be, because it was through the school, but it was still $4000.

“On a monetary sense, no I don’t think that I will sell that many prints or books or digital copies on my website. But not on a ‘do I make my money back’ level, it was definitely worth it,” Mizaur said. “Honestly it goes a lot deeper than money.”

Mizaur isn’t a professional by any means, but he’s not going to stop until he is one. The next step for Mizaur is going to college for film and photography. This can be very risky, but Mizaur is confident he will succeed.

“Going to college for art is a risk, but that’s one I’m willing to take,” Mizaur said. “I’m going to Loyola Marymount and I’m mainly going to study photography. It has a really good program, photography is #7 in the nation and its film is #3 in the nation. Every year those two programs are in the top 10. I’ve only been doing photography for a year and it’s mainly just practice and learn.”  

With a lot to look forward to, and more practice to come, he still isn’t sure where it will take him.

“I’m going to go wherever photography takes me,” Mizaur said.