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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.

Working in the service industry since I was 18 has definitely given me lots of opportunities to explore “customer obsession”. Whether I was at the pizza shop, the gym, or at the dispensary, I practiced what it would take to optimize every transaction with the greatest outcome for the customer. I would say I have the customer obsession model down every time I help someone at the dispensary. I try and tailor each experience to the customers needs. I remember having a particular customer experience with a couple (man and woman, mid 20s) where they took over 50 minutes choosing which marijuana products they wanted to buy. An average transaction mind you, is approximately 2-3 minutes. This couple I’m conversing with and showing products to really have no idea what they want, they literally ask me to show them everything (we have over 300-500 different products in the store easily). Along the way I’m making lots of suggestions that could be great options, but nothing is sticking. Most budtenders might give up at this point, seeing that they cannot make the customer happy. At one point the woman acknowledges she never spent this long in a dispensary (and I couldn’t have imagined a longer transaction either) but she keeps on searching, and so do I, happily. In this situation I really had to set my feelings aside and think, “There’s something that this customer isn’t finding, I MUST help them find it! We will find something you’re excited to try”… even though I was so over this at that point. She finally picks something and I collapse to the floor as they leave. Had I not practiced customer obsession and stayed focused on what they wanted and getting the best options out for them, I may have been there over an hour and a half who knows? At my dispensary we strive for the best service and don’t really pay attention to what the competition is doing.

A time where I demonstrated delivering results was in the final group project in my visual journalism course with Joe Gosen at Western Washington University. Our project was to create a documentary style film with The Nooksack River as the focus. In this project I worked with one other classmate, Ed. Ed was a macho man, and I was a little twerp in comparison, but I had heart. We decided to talk to some of the Lummi nation community organizers and conservationists to get more story out of what is happening (salmon runs were on steep decline at the time). The filming goes well, Ed and I all the shots we need together. When it came time to edit though, Ed completely disappears. I’ll see him in class sometimes and we get some editing in together, but for the most part, I felt like I was on my own. He would flake on every meetup and have an excuse as to why he couldn’t edit that day, often at the last minute to change plans. BUT, the project still had to get done! I take up until the last day to get this project in. Whether or not everyone is there or contributing, you still have to put forth your best shot to deliver something you’re proud of.

Lastly, a time I practiced bias for action was when our dough press at Mod Pizza started malfunctioning. We were in the middle of lunch rush at the Seattle Center Armory by the Needle… tourist season … and we don’t have a way to prepare dough?… We considered calling another store or a manager, anyone to be able to bring another press… which we knew we probably didnt have. Being one of the most senior employees, an idea occurred to me… Our old dough press is in the basement storage. It was heavy, so me and a coworker rush down and lug it back up to the restaurant. It’s not the prettiest dough press, but it was our most efficient option until we could get someone to troubleshoot the current dough press. We ended up making it through okay that day, with some delays and a few angry customers… But hey it happens.

I have the most trouble with the leadership principle of having a backbone: disagree and commit. This one may prove to be my most valuable one to learn just because I am such an agreeable person. I usually see all ideas as inherently good ideas, making my brain make them work even if my initial reaction is “no”. I try not to undermine people, but I realize that disagreeing isn’t undermining, even if it feels so in the moment. I grew up as the youngest sibling and a big part of that was struggling to find autonomy, and feeling like I had a complete voice rather than echoing my older brothers. Having the confidence to disagree is a big challenge for me, I hope to improve my instincts and self-trust as I progress through the program.

In the Summer of 2016, I was offered to do videography for my coworker René’s wedding! We had been work study buddies at WWU’s College of Business and Economics where we aided the IT Specialist with troubleshooting for the faculty, it was a quirky little side job. It was an average day in the office when she asked me, I was embarrassed that I didn’t even notice she was engaged! She had seen some of the photos I had taken on Instagram and I had a small portfolio of wedding photos at the time. She decided to take a chance on me and offer up the gig. I was hesitant at first because it was a big thing to ask of somebody. I’d never done anything like it before. I was afraid to live up to her expectations (although she really had none)… Of course you want your wedding video to look super clean and have it tell the story in detail! I was super unsure of how to go about it … But I accepted. I thought it’d be a unique challenge and it was one of my first paid video gigs so I was super down to try it out.

She gave me the itinerary of the day and kind of just said “I trust your vision”… What vision (lol)? So in preparation, I watched many Youtube videos of sweet weddings (good and bad) and decided the kind of angle I wanted to approach the video from. The day comes; I’ve got a single Canon 6D, a 24-105mm f/4, a 24mm f/1.4, a 50mm f/1.8, an 85mm f/1.8, 3 batteries, a 64GB SD and a monopod. Gear wise I brought maybe too much for 1 person running around a venue. Although I was sweaty and tired for most of the day, the shoot goes without a hitch! I was shooting from the morning of, while everyone got ready, until nighttime when they ran through the sparkler tunnel and rode off in a convertible. I perform a run n gun fly on the wall guerilla style, shoot-everything type strategy and I filmed every little thing I could. I was 20 at the time so when I wasn’t shooting I made friends with the older ladies and got lots of free drinks. Safe to say I was definitely the best dancer at the whole event (refer to blog post 1 for elaboration). They take me to the Bolt Bus station the next day and it breaks down on the way home. Not the best travel experience but its all good.

Once I got home, having nothing but a chromebook at the time as my computing workhorse, I decided to edit the video on an iMac at the UW library with my friend’s login. It took me about 2 days of working there until I got it to a place on Final Cut Pro X that I was proud of. I send it off via Dropbox and wait for a reaction (as this is the most important part)! I was anxious to hear back, but it turned out that the video made them cry. That’s all I could ask for really. Check it out!

I think overall, I want to be able to serve broad and hyper-specific audiences to be a truly successful artist… BUT, I like the community that comes from creating for a niche audience. I think when it comes to my career, I want to make meaningful connections where my impact is more felt as individuals than just seen as part of a bigger entity. Whereas, referring to the chart that Joe Hallock showed us, a video game is a specific purpose spread to a wide audience with a large team. I, myself, would like to air on the side of specialty to a smaller audience. One thing Joe said is to emphasize what you’re strong at! There are many avenues to a broad project, resulting in likely a bigger team where I feel like my influence could get lost. I prefer a small team working on a specific solution that could help me shine and step up more often than in a big team.

A great example of a place I might want to work would be y-designs. Although I don’t think they are in operation anymore (https://y-designs.com/) I feel that they represent the type of team I want to work alongside. They are about a team of 4, and they handle lots of cool clients with solutions for web design, app engineering, brand identity and photography. Working with a small team for me means that we work on things a lot more intimately together. Rather than being handed a stack of tasks, they all seem to work cohesively on every project, and stay in close contact while they all brainstorm, collaborate and execute together. I want to work on a close knit team that really cares about delivering the best possible product with the skills within and in front of us. I can’t tell you exactly what my specialty might be, but I know that I want to be a creator for life, and just get better as we go along. Please help me with any suggestions on what part of design might be great to focus on; at the moment I’m just giving everything my best shot and seeing what I like. Thank you all for helping me explore 🙂

My approach for the video was simple; I wanted to make something chaotic… because these last couple of weeks have been a bit stressful. This video was for the fun of it, really. Needed a break from the big learning curve of coding and getting back into the groove of school work ethic that I’ve been separated from for years. Featuring class material and some of the work that I’ve produced over the last few weeks, I’m already proud of the person that I am becoming. I would like to wish my cohort the best of luck as we embark on a journey of new challenges and triumphs. I mixed video, photo, design elements, text and music for this mashup. I hope through this video you learn a bit about how my brain works, this is truly a compilation of true footage.