First, I would like to welcome you to my blog. This is my first time having a photography-specific blog, so bear with me as I work through the kinks.
As many of you know, I started Jerren Willis Photography in the Summer of 2007. At the time, I was spending my weekends in various Houston nightclubs PAYING to get in just to take photos and get my name out there. Due to those efforts that summer, many know of my work through all of the club photos I took that flooded the internet (later I’ll blog about those years). However, that’s not where and how I got started… I honed in my skills working as a student photographer when I was still in undergrad at Texas A&M.
In the Fall semester of my junior year at A&M (2006) I worked with some fellow students for this website called Black Aggie Community Online (BACO). Basically my tasks were to take photos at various events that took place in the Black Aggie community. With some of my summer internship money I bought a fancy point-and-shoot camera (I think it was a Kodak) so I was using that to take photos. While I was doing that I met this girl named Anna, who wanted me to take photos of her for the upcoming Black & Gold Pageant, of which she was a participant. Anna also worked in the Marketing & Communications (M&C) Department and informed me of a position they had available for a student photographer. She really encouraged me to apply. I was somewhat hesitant, but I decided to go through with it so I went to office max, bought a portfolio, printed out some of my best work (which in hindsight wasn’t too great) and interviewed for the job.
My first day as a student photographer was on November 29, 2006 and it was a position I held until I graduated in 2009. My job was simple–during my free time between classes take photos of ‘campus life’ for the M&C Dept to select a photo to go on the home page of their Aggie Daily page. I would get paid $25 for that single photo selected, which was one of the highest paying student jobs on campus per hours spent–I would spend maybe 60-90 minutes a day looking for subjects.
Below are some of the photos I took on that day (photos taken with Kodak Z650 Zoom camera).
Whitley, Temi, and Sabrina, Class of 2010. Rudder Plaza used to be the hangout for many Aggies back in the day.
View of the old Military Walk, which has been recently replaced with a much better version.
To this day, the Marketing and Communications Department still uses some of my photos for their publications.
– Jerren
