I'm valerie

I've had a lifelong curiosity about photography that started with my mom and her 1979 Canon. I still remember the first time she let me hold it in our backyard, how to focus the lens, to take my own photo.

Photography lead me to the path of graphic design, and graphic design lead me to art direction. I have yet to meet a person who grows up dreaming of being an art director. Each person's story to art direction unique. And this is mine:

After my freshman year in college, I decided that if photography is what I wanted to, then I needed a job in the industry to know for sure. Being the early aughts, I actually opened a phone book and cold called photographers to ask if they needed a photo assistant. I learned then that you only need one person to say yes. So I got a job that summer helping set up jewelry photo shoots in the studio, looking through negatives for reprints, and as second photographer at weddings.

One day in the photo studio, I asked the graphic designer what she was doing. I'm pretty sure an actual light bulb turned on above my head, and I saw a unicorn ride down a rainbow to slap me in the face. I knew instantly that I needed to be doing that. I added graphic design to my major and never looked back. 

My first job out of school, I was a graphic designer working with a team of creatives in the retail industry. It was there that I discovered art direction, and realized it was a serendipitous way to combine my loves of photography and graphic design.

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One source of enjoyment from my work is encouraging others to develop their own problem solving skills. That's one of the reasons I work with students. I don't want to make them into copies of myself, but instead help them figure out what makes them unique and encourage that growth.