About

Tanisha (Neesha) Baptiste was born in Waterbury, CT. As a child, she was fascinated with the world of art. You could often find her drawing, painting, reading, writing and day dreaming. As an adult, she decided that none of these were a sensible career path. 

Neesha attended a Vocational Technical High School for Culinary Arts. She soon decided that while she loved cooking, this was not something that she was passionate about. Her Junior year in high school. she met with an Army Reserves recruiter and she decided to enlist. She served on the Delayed Entry Program for a year and departed CT for Active Duty just 5 days after graduating from high school. She served 10 years Active Duty with the United States Army. 

Her career came to an unexpected end when she was referred to a Medical Evaluation Board after sustaining an injury in training. She was found unfit for duty and suddenly found herself in a brand new position. An unemployed, stay at home wife and mother. Before going stir crazy, she decided to return to school full time. 

After what she will simply call a Lemony Snickets (Series of unfortunate events), she found herself to be a single mother back in CT. 

While she never pursued art full time, she did occasionally pick up a pen, a sketching pencil and even a paintbrush. When Photoshop became popular, she found herself immersed in digital art, editing photos of friends, creating logos and flyers for friends and businesses, and just having fun learning all of the fun tricks that she could do in Photoshop. She eventually decided that she needed to become an adult and get a full time job, leaving her Photoshop to collect dust. 

One day she decided to join a group of friends in a Photography challenge. 365 days of selfies... She picked up her little red Sony Cybershot and began taking photos. She made it a few months into the project before she got sick of looking at her face every day. What she learned from this experience was that she really enjoyed taking photos.....just not of herself. She had several friends who REALLY knew their way around cameras and asked for starter camera suggestions. She decided to go with a Canon Powershot SX110 IS.

In her travels, she found a beautiful lake and went on an adventure with her shiny new camera and fell in love. She would take random photos, but never shared them with the world. Then she stumbled across another 365 project, this one was not a selfie project, just random photos. She immediately signed up and began shooting. She never expected to receive the amount of positive feedback that she received, but it motivated her to continue to learn. 

Eventually she grew tired of playing with the manual settings on her Powershot, so she decided to upgrade to a DSLR. She went with a Nikon D5100 and continued to play with posting 365 projects. She never finished her first, second, third, ANY 365 project. It seemed that real life and being an adult always got in the way. But that never changed her love or passion for her new hobby. 

Neesha was always petrified of shooting people. She saw so much talent around her and grew intimidated. Her mind was filled with self doubt, so she continued to shoot inanimate objects. It became her therapy. One day, she received the push that she needed to set up a small home studio and test shoot a couple of models. Who knew that it would be so much fun?! Shortly after, she lost her studio, but those close to her encouraged her to keep pushing and keep shooting. As you may have noticed, she grew used to facing obstacles and leaping over hurdles, so she dusted her knees off and tried to come up with a plan. She began by asking to shoot events and brought her camera along with her to family gatherings to get some practice.

She is now rebuilding her studio, a business and being a little less sensible. She has discovered that it is okay to daydream.