Welcome! Happy you're here!
Hello! Thank you for visiting my photography blog for my Visual Literacy class at American University!
My love for film and photography began at a very young age. Growing up, my father hosted a television show for the Outdoor Channel. This meant the first 8 years of my life were spent traveling all over the country camping, fishing, and exploring. At 10, I attended my first entrepreneurship conference. This sparked my entrepreneurial passion.
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Through middle school, I started numerous ventures ranging from Social Media data collection, application development, music lessons, and even writing a book. All of this culminated at another conference in Tampa, Florida, when I was 16. This is where I created my media production company, Edge Studios.
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For the first several months, I focused on creating content for municipalities and non-profits. Then, that summer, I had an eye-opening experience at the Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership Seminar. I realized my true passion wasn't just playing with cameras and making money, but rather creating a positive sustainable impact and working with others to achieve their desired human potential. It is here where I set a goal that in one year, I would travel to Guatemala (I chose this location because of my love of Spanish and ease of accessibility) and bring positive change to a community.
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368 days later (3 days off but close enough!) I departed as a cameraman for an ethnographic documentary research project focusing on the impacts of direct-consumership among the indigenous farming and artisanal communities of highland Guatemala. It was here that I discovered documentary work is what I want to spend the rest of my life pursuing.
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After returning from the project, I felt the lessons and stories I learned needed to be shared beyond the screen. This is when I started a public speaking circuit that has brought me across the United States speaking on topics such as the importance of ethnographic practices, utilizing social media to grow your business and youth entrepreneurship.
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At 18, I shifted focus away from Edge Studios and more to freelance work. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I knew finding clients would be difficult. So, I began a mission of creating content that would bring conservation awareness (something very dear to my heart). This has recently brought me to a long list of State and National Parks documenting their importance and their stories. These collections have been used by conservation groups, tourism boards, Getty Images, Hyatt, and state governments, receiving commentary from Canon USA.
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