Finding My Voice Greg Beams Photography Graduate

[Gregory Beams] My name is Gregory Beams, and I'm a graduate student
at the Academy of Art University in their photography program. My father had been a commercial photographer, so I grew up around cameras,
but I never really took pictures. And then slowly, over time,
I started picking up a camera. I started expressing myself through it, and I really didn't know
exactly what I was trying to say.

For me, pursuing a graduate degree
really became about finding my voice. I wanted to better understand what it is
that makes a picture beautiful, because some pictures I would take, I thought they looked great, and other people
thought they were awful, and vice versa. I started researching, "Okay, where might I go?" The Academy of Art University
consistently came up as one of the top programs. It became the obvious choice at the end.

When I first started doing this work, I felt like I was beating the viewer
over the head with the message. And I wasn't trying to say technology is bad. I was just trying to raise awareness
of our use of technology. We're engaged with it pretty much
on a daily  if not hourly  basis.

Oftentimes we're using technology
to try to connect with people, but the reality is, when we use technology, we're actually isolating ourselves
from those same people. This work is really designed
to raise people's awareness about the isolation that happens
when we use technology. I had a series of epiphanies, if you will. In each one of them,
I felt like I learned something new, both about photography and about myself.

None of my photographs would be
what they are today if it wasn't for the instructors at the Academy. It changes the way that you think. It changed the way I see the world.
I see it much more artistically than I used to. I use the left side of my brain a lot more,
and that to me has probably been one of the best things
about the university experience.

The university has been
this launching point of  now I get to go do photography
in the way that I want to, and now I know what I'm doing..