Life with a Camera (and many Lenses)

by Kepei Lei

As the cameras in our pocket, smart phones, become more and more powerful, people keep asking me one question: as an enthusiast photographer, what sets you apart from the rest of us?

For a long time, I was thinking about how to answer this problem. We all take photos for the same purposes: to record a moment. The difference is that my cameras have a potential to produce better works, and that I always sit down in front of my computer to post-process them. These two were my responses to the question at first.

WPI Campus (Oct. 2017)

You are probably thinking that these answers seem way too simple. And you are right! We all can do pretty much the same nowadays with a phone as well. There are great software available for everyone to enjoy photography without the struggle to learn the science behind the camera. Such doubts got me at the end of freshmen year. Because of that, all the photography I did in the first half of my sophomore year was covering different events just to get a paycheck.

Fortunately, a trip helped me find my own answer. During the C-term break of my sophomore year, I went to Germany and Czech Republic with the WPI Choir. On this trip, we visited Theresienstadt Ghetto, one of the concentration camps in Czech Republic. At the camp, thousands of thoughts ran through my mind and I caught one of them:

WPI Cabaret: The 7 Production (Apr. 2018) | Theresienstadt Ghetto (Mar. 2019)

The time when this camp was functioning is no doubt some of the darkest days in the history. However, the sun was the same sun that gives us lights today. If we are making any direct connection to the days of despair, it has to be, ironically, the sun. The sun shined upon those who had no hope of life, and us who are always looking for tomorrow.

From that thought, I crafted a photography series called The Sun Still Rises to express my feelings and thoughts: the best way we can remember the victims of this tragedy is to live our lives, day by day.

From this production, I understood that we photographers are storytellers as well. We look for things that we pass by but fit in our thoughts and emotions. We capture them, modify them to the point that they tell a story in our hearts, and hope that they will resonate with others viewing these works.

This understanding set me up well for the next trip. I was contacted by a tourist agency in 2019. They were looking for a photographer as a guide for a trip in the U.S. mid-west in 2020. They would like me to be the guide and offered me a free trip to scout the national parks beforehand. During this trip, some of my best landscape works were born.

Grand Canyon (Oct. 2019)

For more times than I can count, I got yelled at because I brought my 15-pound backpack wherever I go, including Angel Landing, one of the hardest hiking trails in the U.S. When I got to the top, I only used about 4 pounds of the gear. Was it extra tiring? Yes. Was it worth it? You might say no but my answer is yes. I never know what I would encounter next and I always want to be prepared to take the best shots I can. Because of this, photography eventually becomes a lifestyle, where I simply go on cycles of heavy duty backpack trips, sit in front of the computer to process the photos, and plan the next ones.

Horseshoe Bend (Oct. 2019)