Passion Project: Harrison
I graduated from Temple University this past summer with a bachelor's degree in journalism. More specifically, I focused on photo and multimedia journalism, favoring cameras as storytelling instruments. Since graduation, I've worked on sharpening my technique and done some odd jobs in the photo and video world. I'm still working on getting a full-time photo position, but I'm optimistic about the future. Nevertheless, I've decided to start a project to motivate myself and hopefully others to keep on doing what they love.
The "Passion Project" is an ode to those who have made or are making their passions their livelihood. As someone entering a creative field, I know it's not always easy to look toward the future with confidence. There is a lot of doubt that lingers around my mind as to when a photo career might really take off for me, but I still put all of my heart and soul into trying to make it work. I know it's possible because others have made it work: why not take a moment to find out how they did it?
There are two parts to this project: the first is to talk to these people to find out how they've gotten where they are or plan to get where they want to be. The second part is taking a portrait of the person doing their thing. I want to capture moments of people doing what they love and explore how these moments came to be.
I figured that doing a profile on myself would be a good way to get the project started so here goes...
I took a few photography courses in high school but didn't really care about taking good photos until later. Back then, I was shooting on a cheap point-and-shoot and frankly didn't enjoy working with it so my efforts were more focused on learning to use Photoshop; a skill that has served me well since. I got my first DSLR, a Canon Rebel T3, for Christmas in 2012 which led to me taking an intro photojournalism course at Temple my fall 2013 semester. I consider this to be the point I began seriously pursuing photography.
It was made abundantly clear off the bat that being able to use Photoshop wasn't going to impress my professor, a seasoned veteran of photojournalism, academia and the United States Marine Corps. The first week, I submitted a photo of a flower, selectively edited so that the petals were in color while the rest of the image was in black and white. I thought I was pretty original. What I didn't take into account is that it stated very clearly in the syllabus that we were to shoot in black and white.and that the focus of the class was composition. As the professor sorted through the work on review day he got to my photo, said nothing, and cast it aside
The no-nonsense attitude of this professor is what came to shape me as not only a photographer, but as a young professional, over the next three years. His standards of quality and approval quickly became a challenge in my mind to meet and then exceed. From software to projects I worked tirelessly to learn all I could to surpass his expectations. The result is that I'm at least fairly proficient in photo, video, graphic, publication and web design and writing; a jack of all trades, if you will.
More than anything, his classes gave me a work ethic; a desire to know more than I do. You might argue that that's why one goes to college in the first place but that really wasn't the case for me. I was pretty aimless in school: I had never really applied myself to anything and got by with passing grades. I was in college because I didn't know what to do after high school, not because I had a goal in mind. My photo professor taught me how to give my all to something and that's been driving me for the past four years.
The best way to learn photography is to just do it. Now that I'm finished with school I'm setting up as many shoots as I can to keep myself practicing. Bartending is paying my loans and the biggest struggle is remaining energetic enough to keep on shooting on top of that. I'm looking for a full time job and trying to keep myself busy with projects and assignments (like this one) to help make that happen.
My goal is to move into a studio space to base a photography business out of in the next couple of years. I consider myself a generalist, not really favoring any specific subject or style over any other, and want to be among the most versatile media professionals working today.
Interested in participating in this project? Please feel free to reach out to me at brinkharrison@gmail,com and I'll be happy to set up a date with you. Thanks!
