Thirteen-year old Saanichton resident Payton Braun was excited when he heard the news that he won first place in the Youth Category of Canadian Geographic’s ‘Show Us Your Canada’ photography contest.
“It was really exciting, I really like photography,” he told the PNR at his family’s Saanichton farm.
Braun won with his photo titled ‘Snail in Jail,’ a photo of a snail moving along his backyard farm fence. The photo was the winner in the Kid’s Perspective Category.
He received his first small camera when he was just eight years old, and since then, the budding young photographer has acquired a fancy Canon he now uses to take photos.
“I just like taking pictures, I don’t know why. I just find it really, really fun going out and taking pictures of everything…” he said.
Braun even has his own website to showcase some of his work with different categories including animals, marine, scenery, automobiles and more.
He likes to enter his photos in photo contests and enters quite a number of them. He said his favourite things to shoot are flowers, wildlife and scenery in general.
He uses three lenses; his long-range lens (18-270mm), his macro lens and fisheye lens.
His favourite? The macro lens, as he loves getting up close to the animals and flowers.
And this photographer sure loves what he does.
Aside from being home-schooled and taking award-winning photographs, Braun also serves as a business man. He has his own greeting card business on his website where he sells photo greeting cards he makes from his images. He also sells calendars that he produces from his photos, using a system that allows customers to choose the photo for each month.
As for his future in photography, Braun plans to keep snapping away.
“I hope I can take lots of good pictures and keep doing what I’m doing.”
People can visit Braun’s website to view his photos at paytonbraunphotography.weebly.com.