Curtis Lashon brings his camera with him everywhere he goes. One of the first things Lashon told his boss at Hilltop Pizzeria was his camera would always be with him, just like it is on his jogs, hikes and mountain bike rides.
The Northwood resident and Coe-Brown senior’s desire to capture every possible moment through photography paid off when one of his photographs was selected as the winner of this year’s Congressional Art Competition for New Hampshire’s second district. The winning photograph will be hung in the United States Capitol building in Washington, D.C.
The competition, which has been held nationally since 1982, is sponsored by the office of Congresswoman Annie Kuster and had 85 entries this year.
“It is so wonderful to see the exceptional talent that our Granite State high school students possess,” Kuster said in a statement. “It was great to meet this year’s winner, Curtis Lashon, from Coe-Brown Northwood Academy, and I’m excited to see his piece hanging in the Capitol very soon.”
The winning photograph was captured with a bit of luck on a hiking trip up Mount Chocorua, Lashon said.
“It was really a random shot,” he said. “I saw this cool thing and I (thought) it’s worth taking a photo.”
For Lashon, the win was somewhat unexpected.
“It’s shocking,” he said. “To be honest, I didn’t think I was going to win, I just took the picture for fun.”
Lashon first realized the power of photography, and his desire to capture specific moments, when his father passed away when he was a teenager.
“When I was little, 13 years old, my father passed away from cancer,” he said. “But before that I had an iPod and what I did was capture a photo of him and I holding hands and ever since that day, I was inspired to start taking photos.”
Lashon’s photography hobby was encouraged at Christmas in 2014, when he received his first camera.
“I’ve just loved it so much,” he said. “I try and capture awkward moments. I want to capture the moments where no other photographer is going to frame.”
While he has devoted some of his time to other forms of art – specifically poetry and rock sculptures – Lashon said photography, especially nature and long-exposure photography, is his true passion.
Most of Lashon’s photography, he said, isn’t done with high-tech equipment.
“I don’t have a fancy camera, it’s a beginner’s camera,” Lashon said. “It fell off Mount Washington once and lost the door, (but) I just love it.”
Lashon said despite the quality of his camera, he has devoted resources to other areas of the photographic process and to produce the highest quality images he can.
“I’ve focused everything on photography,” he said. “I recently bought a nice computer and a nice 4k TV (for editing).”
When Lashon heads to Great Bay Community College in the fall to study advanced composite manufacturing, he said he wants to continue on with photography as a hobby.
Lashon’s decision to study composite manufacturing was, in large part, aided by his experience in photography.
“I’m a hands-on learner,” he said. “I like to work with metals and things I can just (play) with, like cameras.”
One of the key lessons Lashon said he learned from photography was the importance of exploration and getting “purposefully lost.”
Lashon stressed the importance of this exploration and discovery for anyone hoping to pursue photography
“Never stop exploring,” he said, “If you capture the moment now, you can really look back to it in your senior years and (say), ‘wow, I actually did that.’ ”