As we all know, COVID caused a ripple in many of our lives. In the spring of 2020, the 3A class’ job search was abruptly impacted by COVID as a number of co-op positions fell through. Even so, throughout the summer, we saw our friends posting cool things on their instagrams!
In this episode of Keeping up with the Kovids, 3B students Dani and Razmig decided to dig up some insider info as to what their classmates Nicole Chen and Derrick Clouthier were up to!
How do you feel about not getting a co-op job due to COVID?
Derrick: In some weird way, I’m grateful for it. because even though I didn’t expect it, I’m glad to have a minute to figure things out. It’s like “oh, it’s nice to actually take some time to sleep” or “it’s nice to spend some time on hobbies or all the other fun things that we don’t normally get to do”.
How did you decide to do an e-coop this term and would you have ever considered it if not for COVID?
Derrick: In my last co-op, I worked a lot on my photography and exploring different sides to it. And so, I started doing some portrait work! I did some workshops, online courses, and research on the business side of photography. I went to talks and met a lot of photographers. I was kind of always working on photography as a second job whenever I was on co-op, so I always had an interest in doing it as an e-co-op. But the difficulty at the end of the day was that I just didn’t really know if I could afford to take four months off and focus on growing that. And so when spring came around and it started looking like getting a job wasn’t a reality, at least for the first couple months, I felt like I would probably end up doing a part-time job or something else while I was pursuing photography as a business. But in the end, it kind of just made sense to go for it. It’s definitely an opportunity I was not expecting, and it had unforeseen pros and cons, but it was a nice opportunity to get myself to be accountable for spending time on the business and committing to it daily.
Were you also planning on taking the co-op term off? Do you think that you would have taken this opportunity to stay at home if it weren’t for the current circumstances?
Nicole: I hadn’t been home or seen my family in the last year, so it’s definitely been nice coming back. It wasn’t in my plans at all to come back to Regina, but it’s forced me to slow down and rest, which I think is just as important as getting out to study/work. I took the first half of the summer off, and now I’m working at a local firm in Regina.
TYPICAL DAY
What’s your typical day like?
Nicole: With covid being less severe in Regina, I’m able to work two days of the week in-office and spend the remaining three days working from home. Working from home has been an… interesting experience. My whole family is home right now, and while I love them, I have never been more thankful for noise-canceling headphones. The upside of working from home is that it’s much more flexible. I’ve been getting more regular exercise because I’m able to go for a bike ride or a walk during lunch. My office is very understanding of the disruptions covid has created in the workplace and in team settings, so they’ve tried their best to accommodate us with flexible schedules and equipment such as headsets and monitors to work effectively from home. Every morning, we sign in on teams stating our hours and if we’re going to site, just to get a sense of where everyone in the office is, at what time.
How do you prepare yourself for work-from-home days?
Nicole: I need to trick my brain into thinking I’m physically going into the office. Otherwise, I will be a complete lump. I go through a normal morning routine and change into actual clothes I’d wear to the office. I also change the layout of my desk every morning. Since I do all my work in my bedroom, and I have to trick myself into thinking it’s not a space for sleeping or relaxing anymore. For me, the most challenging thing about working from home is not being able to change environments. When you physically get up to walk or drive to work, your brain understands that it’s supposed to shift to work mode, because it’s going to an environment for working. After I get ready in the morning just to return to my bedroom for work, my brain gets…confused. It takes more effort to get into work mode. Also, every time I have a zoom meeting I have to move my stuffed animals off my bed, so I don’t look like I’m a child.
What are some ways that your work stays social?
Nicole: We do a big office meeting on teams every two weeks. The last half hour is a themed discussion where the office gets to learn more about each other. There’s a dedicated team of people who prepare questions and ask random people in the office informal questions about their life. As someone who has yet to be asked these questions, I’ve found this segment genuinely enjoyable. It’s allowed me to learn more about my colleagues I don’t talk to as much. One colleague was teaching an online course for architecture students. And then this other lady, she’s a mom, and she talked about building a treehouse for her kids. You kind of get to see people’s personalities a bit more, sometimes in ways you wouldn’t if you were just having small talk by the watercooler.
What are some challenges or, what are some advantages of working from home?
Nicole: I guess working from home, you get to dictate your own time a bit more. When you’re in the office, you’re kind of expected to sit at your desk all day and just do work. At home, you get to work more efficiently. You know how long it will take to do something, you do it, and then you can take a break without worrying about your coworkers judging you. It’s productive to take breaks, okay?
Derrick: I’ve used this summer to break bad habits and build a good routine. I feel like I don’t know what a hobby is for me because I would sit down to play video games but then feel stressed because I would rather be working. It’s turned into my day’s being structured like, I wake up at 8 am, run 4km, shower, read for about a half-hour and then I work until 10 pm, rest for a half-hour and then sleep.
FROM HOBBY TO BUSINESS
What was the process turning your hobby into a business? (or something along these lines?)
Derrick: It started just before COVID shut down the school, I got hired by the UW grad committee to shoot their graduation event. It was really exciting to get some money from photography. And then, of course, it immediately got canceled but it taught me to force myself to make a portfolio and put myself out there. I did a lot of online courses and workshops to invest in my own knowledge before trying to start a business. Building a portfolio was definitely a challenge because even though I understood how to do it, I didn’t have examples of work I have done, so I had to reach out to people to start it off.
Nicole: I’ve done commissioned artwork for different people and organizations throughout the years, but I still struggle with undervaluing my work, because I’m not a “professional artist.” But I’m trying to get out of that mindset. I think as long as I put time, meaning, and effort into my pieces, it is worthwhile. I used to be super wishy-washy about pricing my work, kind of leaving it up to the client. I had this mindset of “it’s okay if I get paid less, because I’m doing this for the experience.” I think that was okay for when I was starting out, but since then, I’ve developed my skills more and have become more confident in my ability to create a piece the client will enjoy. Now, when I get asked by a client to price my work, I provide an hourly rate and an estimate of how much time I will spend on it. And I leave it at that.
How do you differentiate in your mind between what is recreational time and what is work?
Derrick: I’m still grappling with that. I had an existential debate about that and I feel like I still don’t have the answer. Earlier when restrictions started lifting and trails opened up, Sarah and I went on a ton of hikes. We went out to Killarney, Ontario and this was the first time I built a specific shot list for myself. And for these shots, we woke up early to catch the sunrise, canoed for four hours, and climbed a mountain. It was weird to wrap my head around the trip because as much as I was relaxing and enjoying the hike, in my head I found myself thinking “did I check this box and this box and this box?”. I like being focused on something that has functionality, so to me it’s nice having a hobby that’s both productive and a creative outlet.
Does it help to set your own deadlines?
Derrick: Yeah, I think a simple way to differentiate between a hobby and a job is that there’s so much more organization and planning that goes into my photography now. It’s really exciting to me but can get stressful at times too. So, that’s when I need to force myself to take a break and do some other readings or hobbies.
How do you keep up your art outside of commissions?
Nicole: Nothing crazy, I am just trying to create art more often, and with less pressure. With more free time, I am getting to explore themes I am interested in and seeing where it takes me. At the same time, I’ve been learning and reading about things I’ve always been interested in but had never had the time to study. This kind of feeds into the creating art part, and keeps me wanting to create stuff. It also helps to have friends who are doing their own independent projects as well. We chat regularly about what we’re doing and learning to keep each other inspired and motivated.
PHOTOGRAPHY LIFE
How do you plan shots for a place you’ve never been?
Derrick: Your first step would be to make a pitch deck, where you’d essentially create a mood board of the kinds of images you want to take. So you would want to find images that show the feeling you’re looking for and also the location itself. There’s a great website called The Outbound where you can type in any location and it shows you interesting hikes, adventures, and biking trails. I used this site when trying to see what type of shots I could potentially get when I go on a hike. I also use Google Maps in satellite mode. I can see the topography and understand different areas better, like where the sun will be coming from. I can also find photos that other people have taken so I can see what types of views are possible.
How do you deal with unpredictable things like the weather?
Derrick: Yeah, forecast is a very real thing. We had to plan our trip completely around it. Like the trip to Killarney, it was supposed to rain the day before, then not rain for two days, and then rain again. So we went exactly for that no-rain window and hoped for the best. Our Quebec trip we’re planning for next week looks like a storm’s on its way, so we’re basically just going to be trying to outrun the storm. You just have to make the best of the situation, it’s just part of the outdoors. It’s fun and terrifying!
How long have you been interested in photography?
Derrick: I almost accidentally became interested in photography, because I very naively thought that it would be easier to buy a camera, that I’ve never really used before, and make an entire portfolio for the University of Waterloo entrance interview. I was never confident with my art and so I just thought to myself “okay, I’ll make a photography portfolio”. I literally just had two pieces of art. But it was in that accident that I realized I liked photography! Once first-year started, I barely picked up my camera. But since then, I’ve been taking photos every day!
COOL PEOPLE
Did you learn about any interesting photographers?
Derrick: I went down this rabbit hole where I became absolutely obsessed with Antarctica and have read pretty much every book I can get my hands on about the expeditions done to Antarctica in the early 1900s. And that led me down an expedition path of who are the modern-day people doing expeditions and what traveling to Antarctica and the Arctic look like today. And from there, I found this guy named Scott and he’s really interesting. He’s from Calgary and was named Canadian Geographic’s photographer of the year. Partnering with them, he goes on expeditions about three times a year. This was fascinating to me because he very much stumbled into the job and his career just took off from there. And then there’s another photographer who was at the Banff Film Festival, and he lives in the Yukon, and he does nature photography and landscape and a lot of things like that.
Did they offer any advice?
Derrick: Yeah, they talked about their workflow, how they plan their shoots, monitoring the weather. And although the talks were really fascinating, they never really answered questions like “how do people make a living out of this”. So that’s something I’m still figuring out.
Did you do any fun collaborative projects over the summer?
Nicole: One of my best friends is a designer, and does a lot of self-initiated projects. Last year, she just organized her own show for a series of scarves that she designed. She’s the type of person that really likes sharing her art in person and having that kind of community gathering aspect to it, and she was sad that this year she couldn’t have a show. One day, she sent me a random voice note about how she thought it’d be cool to have a virtual gallery. I saw that a lot of universities were using virtual galleries with their final shows and thesis reviews, so I was like, it is possible! I’ll make you one! So one day, we sat down together on Google Hangouts, I shared my screen and she talked me through what she imagined the space would be like, how people would walk through it, how big she wanted her paintings to be, things like that. As she talked me through it, I modeled it in Rhino, and before we knew it, we had this gallery space. To show her artwork, I texture mapped the jpegs onto little frames I had modeled on the walls. Then I put it through Enscape and exported the render as a panoramic image. Then, you can write a script or post it on Facebook for people to view as a 360 photo that you can virtually walk around in!
With it being online, how did that change the gallery space for you?
Nicole: It was interesting because you see what the possibilities are with having virtual ways of viewing art. It’s one thing to view an image on your screen, but it’s another thing to emulate that feeling of being in a space, looking around and having the freedom to choose where you want to turn or how long you want to look at something for. It adds more of an experiential aspect to viewing art on a screen compared to static images that you flip through. It’s also an experience that isn’t limited to one day, and it’s something you can share with friends/family across the world that would’ve been unable to attend a physical gallery.
CURRENT WORK
What’s a project you’re currently working on?
Derrick: I’m working on this idea of a cold brew company and how cold brew coffee has this great advantage that you can take it anywhere you go. So you can always have this high-quality coffee even when you’re moving around or hiking or on road trips, things like that. And I don’t see anyone currently marketing that. I was thinking that this would be a really interesting connection. And the types of trips I’ve been taking would be perfect for that.
Nicole: I just finished illustrating this piece for the Regina Downtown Business Improvement District. Every year they do this mural program where they get artists to create artwork for doors in alleyways so that people feel safer and encouraged to use these informal pathways in the city. With my piece, I illustrated different native flowers in Saskatchewan. There’s always this perception that Saskatchewan is just grass, cows, and wheat, and that it’s really boring. The idea behind this piece is that there’s actually a lot of diverse plants, native fauna, and wildlife native to Saskatchewan and it can be really beautiful if you just take a closer look. It was also to raise awareness about conservation and habitat protection, since a lot of land is sold for monocultural farming here, leaving less land for native species. I guess that’s where the stereotype comes from. So I illustrated 10 different native plants in Saskatchewan, and labeled them. The intent was to encourage passerbys to plant native plants in their own yards, or look out for them in the wild. To foster this idea about loving your land and protecting it.
TIPS FOR FIRST YEARS?
Do you have any tips for first years as to how they can try to keep up their own hobbies while in school, knowing how busy first year can be?
Nicole: Yes, it’s super important to not lose sight of things that bring you joy. While studio culture is great for collaborating and learning from your peers, it’s easy to get lost in what everyone else is doing. Learning everything you can from your professors and peers while keeping sight of your own interests and values can help you create projects in school that are unique and meaningful to you. This can mean having a project outside of school that you chip away at when you want to take a break from work, or scheduling time for your hobby a few times a week.
How was the switch from never hand drawing to having to draft for school?
Derrick: It was really weird. I knew it wasn’t my strong suit, so I spent way too much time trying to get it right. My issue was also that I’m left-handed, which means I smudge literally everything I touch. And so, hand drafting was probably my nightmare. And I’m surprised I’m not haunted to this day.
Do you think you have to know how to draw in order to apply for this program?
Derrick: I think there’s always a need for sketching, it’s definitely an important skill. But I think sketching isn’t the same as being talented at drawing. You just need to know how to think through your ideas visually.
Is there anything else you want to add?
Nicole:
Have fun, enjoy this very intensive yet fulfilling time in your life, but don’t forget to check in with yourself!
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