It feels like I’m between 2 worlds with photo and design right now. Photo was/is still my first love in the art world. There’s nothing that has brought me more joy expressively than being able to capture life and see things through a camera. Doing portraiture for clients, freelancing for a music publication, taking photos with friends, with street photography, it was all a way to connect with others in a unique way. I look up to those around me in so many different ways and get inspired easily, capturing it through photography just made sense to me, I wanted to highlight the life around me.
Design is a new passion that I am quickly growing to really appreciate this field and what really goes on behind creating the things I use, feel, hear and see everyday. I have lots of friends from high school who went on to do design at some really cool places, and watching their growth definitely inspired me to reach out to this program. I loved seeing the posters, the branding, the app prototypes and packaging and all of the amazing ideas they brought to life with just their talents and some technology.
I am truly enjoying the chance to intertwine these worlds as I see fit while I gain a bigger repertoire of skills through this program. I have definitely opened up myself to the idea of just how design can influence and aid photography. Being able to build app prototypes in Figma, for example, while heavily rooted in design, also incorporates lots of etiquette with photo choice. Figureing out how big to make a photo, since these are really what people enjoy in an app experience. What kind of text would compliment the hero image that I’m putting on the landing page of this website? The accents and background colors of pages can also be so dependent on the palette of the videos or photos you are incorporating in that project.
It also comes down to what makes great photography? I think about how in our design courses we are able to cycle through photography so interchangeably because of mockups we are making, using plugins like Unsplash to have access to really high quality free photos. I also think about what it’d be like to have both of those jobs in one. I am starting to see that I am a person who could be qualified to provide the photos and the layout for or a project. By the end of the program I see endless potential for melding these two worlds together in a position where I get a good amount of creative control on how things are executed, wherever I end up. Erik Fadiman mentioned in class yesterday that lots of UI jobs may be dissolving in the next few years because of the progress with AI generated art. I must find a way to be multidisciplinary, because I was genuinely interested in UI. I think rounding myself out to be someone who can do UI, UX, visual design, branding, packaging, AND photography is my best option for being able to market myself. I’m still gaining confidence in what it means to be a designer and I already feel like I’m on the right path. I want to keep in touch with my old skillset with photo/video too to make sure that these skills, along with my current focus as design, grow together and only compound my artistic prowess and my marketability.