Nomaddermedia takes over

In 2020, it dawned on me that I tackled task after task at TGS that would have scared the bejesus out of the old me. I filmed and swam with sea lions one term, then tackled a multi-camera lecture of an educational big wig without advance notice the next. The most extravagant graduations you’ve ever seen? I photographed them three years in a row. They were like weddings with fifteen simultaneous brides each!

The job search reversed some of the confidence I had when I left TGS. Even if you are aware of the politics of job-getting, it’s so easy to let rejections erode your knowledge of your own capacity. I needed a reminder that my media training equipped me handsomely for working as a one-woman production crew from start to finish.

The media landscape outside of a globe-traveling school looked highly specialized to me: wedding photographers, cameramen on huge crews, newborn portrait artists, editors for companies focused on promotional work. I wanted to penetrate the market, but I couldn’t choose my focus. I prefer the variety and challenge of different creative tasks. I like working a mile wide and an inch deep, learning the whole way, under-promising and over-delivering.

This is how Nomaddermedia LLC came to be.

Painted Mines outside Calhan, Colorado

My man and I went for a beautiful three-mile walk in the Paint Mines outside Calhan, Colorado. Compared to some of the more breath-taking landscapes in the Wild West, this spot doesn’t stack up, but the fact that it emerges from rolling farmlands is very interesting. Living in this part of the country is a constant gift of perspective with so much grandeur. It’s essential that we respect these spaces and not use them as Instagram vanity backgrounds. We saw plenty of people standing on the rock formations. Please stay on the gravel trails.

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Multnomah Falls outside Portland, Oregon

My man and I went to visit family in Vancouver, Washington over the first weekend in July. We did a beautiful hike to Multnomah Falls on the Oregon side of the river, and the weather was excellent. Check out that beautiful shiba inu!

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The night I saw the Northern Lights

Each streak garnered the same reaction. The crowd grew, feed still with fingers pointing to the sky. And then a streak became a band, a dim bow across the sky above that slowly grew in intensity. We were babies bouncing under a green headband in the sky.

Rain clouds blow through the highlands of Scotland

I had heavenly expectations of the highland air. I thought it would be uncommonly sweet, a cold drink of water for my lungs. Instead, the air I invited in smelled like fresh biology, life and death but more of the former. Somewhere nearby, there was undoubtedly a cow sweating, a rooster breathing heavily, an earthworm realizing it could now slither back underground. From a 1st floor window, I sucked up all that biology in a moment of wonder and discovery, in the specialness of a start.

Photographing Christmas with the family

Allison and William, Christmas 2014

Sometimes when I'm home, I turn the camera on my family. They like to cheese it up in photos, but when their cheek muscles relax a bit and they get into their element, you can see the real smiles emerge.

A patchwork quilt of my days in Japan

For the last two years, I've used these little collages as a way to quickly chronicle a chapter of my work life. While this says "Hiro" (a.k.a Hiroshima) and some of the images are from elsewhere in Japan, this represents some of my favorite moments this term, the ones I continue to savor even months later.

Northeast Japan still hurts from the 3/11 disaster...and you knowing that actually helps

The more wonderful people and places I encounter, the more difficult choosing causes becomes for me, and I can understand that you might as well find difficulty in extending much of yourself to this cause with so many other things begging for your support. That's why I hope it feels entirely doable to you to simply follow them on Facebook and begin your engagement there. A message, a photo, or a "like" could be just the encouragement they needed for the next step.

Kyoto through the lens

I wasn't a part of the planning process for Kyoto, so every day presented new information and surprising activities I gulped up. The highlights included walking through a bamboo forest, watching chunky snowflakes coat the city, and our tea ceremony with a maiko, a geiko (or geisha) in training. I rolled my own sushi for the first time, which was a bucket list item, and I finally visited the orange gates captured in Memoirs of a Geisha.

A patchwork quilt of my Indian days

My third exploration of these Instagram collages is providing some great perspective on our time in India. Instagram images feel like highlights of daily joys, and usually a sum-up post of images from a place is a showcase of your best and most influential moments. Making a little visual quilt of the daily joys seems to weave the kind of fabric that makes sense to my mind and likely memorializes a place akin to how I will mentally.

The time I took ten students to the war-torn region of Kashmir and they loved it

Have you ever been on a trip that you knew was so special: every detail seemed divinely delivered, every moment one to journal about, every vision worthy of an Instagram? This was the sentiment possessed by all involved in our trip. Lazy nights spent huddled around the fire were coupled with songs or thoughtful talks about travel. Even in moments where the students were out of their element, up before dawn, freezing, or pushed to their physical limits on hikes, they were still so engaged. The usual shyness of students in need of filtering questions through their teachers to the guides dissolved after a half hour on the ground. The students loved Ashika.

What is evidence of good travel?

We burn fuel, and sometimes we observe where that takes us,hypothetically hoping it's toward patch-covered nirvana, an open mind Regardless of the "where to" but focusing on the "so what" What is travel, and what is a traveler?

A patchwork quilt of my Boston days

I found this idea while in Buenos Aires and used it to memorialize my little life in the Argentine capital. I tried it out again with the beautiful city and experience of Boston, MA.

Attending my first opening night via the interwebs

Thought it wasn't my first choice to attend virtually, it was my only realistic option, as I was deeply embedded in school on May 1st, the day of the event. But this was a big moment for me, a first exhibition for an art major and with deep significance in location at that. I wanted to be able to absorb these factors viscerally and emerge from the experience enriched and with the sense that I had exhibited work always meant for others' eyes.

A patchwork quilt of my Argentina days

Argentina instamosaic

Packing commences soon for the USA. Mental packing happens sooner. I had a little life here in Argentina. It will be remembered a little something like this.

Photoblog: a summertime reunion of travel friends in Vermont

One year of teaching in China and two years of Peace Corps in Malawi later, my dear friends from Semester at Sea and I finally reunited. Alexis and I flew to Burlington, Vermont within 20 hours of Garrett's homecoming, and these are the good times we enjoyed. When I'm not at work, I don't want to be continuously documenting my life in high def. That's why I played with Instagram this time around (click on the images to view in lightbox).

This is what the last three months in Germany looked like

Lindsay, Irene, and Andy in Prague acting silly

Freshly relieved of my Creative Art teaching responsibilities and greatly assisted with social media management, I not only had time to create videos, edit photography, and write blogs on the ground; after a 10-hour day, I regularly had hours to myself in the evening to produce work of my own volition and be in the incredible city of Berlin.

This is what the last three months in Thailand looked like

Just as in Ecuador, this is what I stared at every day of the Thailand term: my portable media HQ of two MacBook Pros, an iPad, an iPhone, and about 13 TB worth of storage power. I see pixels in my dreams. However, what wasn't just like Ecuador was my workload. With the addition of a co-teacher in Creative Arts, I earned days onto my work week. That meant videos were made on the ground, and (gasp!) I was able to shave off hours here and there to do things for myself.

One meal inspires three months of memories in Thailand

I keep mentioning to our students that this phenomenon occurs constantly, with no warning, regarding foods, flavors, experiences, and beyond. All of a sudden, we're okay with what we formerly weren't (and of course, the opposite is always possible). I'm inclined to believe these mini-epiphanies are more perceptible on the road where they can be constantly questioned.

This is what the last three months in Ecuador looked like

MacBook Pros, iPads, iPhones, and intense production tech

There was rarely a time when I didn't feel the necessity to document something; it all carried the weight of potentially useful in the eyes of a one-person production crew. My schedule seemed the product of an ADHD-ridden ninja. And on those rarest of occasions, I was able to venture around the corner of my hotel home to see angles of Cuenca myself.