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I am very grateful that handheld devices were not my main source of entertainment growing up. Apart from watching college basketball and football games, I had the time, boredom, and space to let my imagination take over. I would create and capture stories with my toys, other household items, and my curiosity. With a solid foundation of minimal distraction, my parents gave me the freedom to ask questions and explore how I could tell my own stories taking inspiration from those sports broadcasts my family would all watch together every weekend.
After seeing my desire for storytelling grow, my dad suggested I join the publications community, and my journalism career was born. Watching those around me cover events like I had never seen before as an art form in itself captivated me, while having the opportunity to work alongside these creatives. I was addicted. I loved consuming an understanding of how leadership structures worked and quickly found mentors in my program empowering me to climb the ladder. I still remember being told as a freshman that I had something special and that I needed to take advantage of my skills to help those around me and help build captivating narratives to reach unlikely audiences.
I grew increasingly fascinated by how all elements of storytelling work together, not just mechanically with cameras and software but also emotionally. I love understanding how a camera angle works to change an audience’s perspective, how color theory can make someone feel an emotion you are hinting at, or even how a character’s movement in a scene can influence the story being told. I always loved how I knew as a child that Pixar movies could make some of the most rock solid people in my life tear up, and I wanted to be able to bring out a form of that in my own audience. From as early as I can remember I have been trying to learn to use the tools available to me to do just that. YouTube was a major asset in my self directed learning. I spent countless hours understanding how editing, capturing, physics of motion, light, sound, and different software could be leveraged to improve my work and hone my storytelling proficiency. My increasing skills and new discoveries made me feel the need to learn even more.
Problem solving and curiosity are at the center of my creative work and keep me interested. When I find new software, a new camera, have a storytelling challenge, or discover an interesting piece of work, that spark ignites a fire of motivation in me. I become determined to understand it completely and let my prior knowledge of storytelling become enhanced by new technologies, tools and ideas. If I lack the resources, I explore communities related to those topics and look for mentors that can help me grow. This led to me to work with college students majoring in fields centered around digital storytelling, as well as attending online classes taught by high photographers and videographers with experience in producing content for NBA affiliates, Big Ten sports teams, and renowned wedding photographers. The drive for me to problem solve and capture new emotions comes from being so self directed in my learning and having a strong network of support. It also comes from the many years of playing level based video games that taught me to look at situations and problems from different angles. I learned that allowing myself to try things and fail, but not let my frustration consume me has allowed me to find new solutions for creative problems. This patience came as an excellent trait while teaching myself photography over the last two years through trial and error.
When it comes to unknown situations I am not afraid of them, in reality I actually enjoy being in unknown situations because it gives me the opportunity to learn faster, as a sort of a trial by fire. Tackling new creative challenges that require quickly adapting excites me because I know I have been able to do it in the past and I apply that same mentality to help me succeed. I understand that to navigate these unknown situations I can rely on my strong communication skills as well as my persistence to get something done right, even if it takes a few tries. One of the mottos I live by came from the YouTube channel Yes Theory: “Seek Discomfort.” This motto has evolved over the years into a mindset for me, ensuring that I am able to continue to push myself to find the unknown and discover new skills that help me understand the world around me, as well as create a deeper sense of myself as an artist and individual.
One moment that stands out to me when I had limited knowledge and faced the unknown was when I only had a few months of experience and was sent out to cover my high school’s Varsity Basketball State Semi-Final at the Breslin Center. I had never shot or been on the floor of a college basketball court but I adapted quickly, using the marks on the baseline to understand where it was appropriate to sit and capture the stories of the game. This experience taught me that I could succeed in these higher level and higher stress situations, so much so that I was able to take my talents and continue with my sports photography even to the floor of NBA arenas such as Little Caesars Arena in Detroit.
My determination and mindset to learn things and get them done to the best of my ability can both be a strength for me as well as a weakness. When I enter a flow state while working on storytelling projects I often lose track of time. I end up sacrificing social time or sleep to get what I’m working on just right. It’s a habit I need to learn to better manage, but it is a side effect of how passionate I am about my creative process and ultimately leads me to create more and better projects. My work ethic comes from major figures I looked up to in my life, my parental support for certain, but Kobe Bryant's Mamba Mentality and relentless drive also stuck with me even after I stopped playing basketball competitively. I understood that I could transfer the same values off the court and into my artistic efforts allowing for exponential growth. Leveraging my competitive drive, hard work, and creative flow state have propelled me to reach my goals.
Visual storytelling through Photography and videography feel so natural to me and are a continuation of who I was as a little kid. I am passionate about describing and illustrating untold narratives to help better connect audiences to reality and my subjects in frame. The evolution of my simple storytelling skills using toys and rough drawings has transformed into a lifelong passion for creating and conveying emotion through movement, visuals, and design. The tools photography and videography provides allows me to bring those important narratives to light and turn my creativity into feelings that an audience can connect with. I am excited to continue growing in the visual storytelling space, specifically higher level sports photo and video in journalism, to see how deeply my creative expression can move audiences.
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