My Experience with the GVSU Promotions Office

Finding My Confidence Through GVSU Promotions Office

When I first applied to work for Grand Valley State University's Promotions Office

during my freshman year, I didn't get the job.

Honestly, I knew why. I knew my photography was good enough, but I also

knew I had blown the interview.

At that point, I had spent most of my time photographing on my own.

I had done senior sessions,

freelance work and plenty of photography before coming to Grand Valley,

but I had never really been part of a creative team. I wasn't used to having other photographers around me,

getting feedback or having to explain the choices I was making behind the camera.

My confidence in my photography had always been there. My confidence in myself wasn't quite there yet. So when I saw that Promotions was hiring again the following summer, I figured, why not? I still believed in my work, and by then I felt more confident in myself too.

I was definitely nervous for the interview, but this time I got the job. Looking back now, I don't think I could have known how much that decision would shape the next three years of my college experience.

Learning to Put Myself in the Room

Starting at Promotions was intimidating.

I went from being almost entirely a solo photographer to working

around other photographers, videographers, designers and creatives.

Suddenly, I wasn't just photographing for myself. I was showing up to events representing a team,

communicating with people I had never met and figuring out how to make photographs in environments that were constantly changing.

A lot of that confidence came from simply being thrown into situations and learning how to work through them.

One of the first events I photographed completely on my own was Silent Disco.

It was dark, I barely knew anything about flash photography at the time,

and the whole experience became one big lesson in working with low light and understanding my camera better.

Nothing disastrous happened. It was just one of those moments where I realized that sometimes the only way to learn is to go photograph it and figure it out. Over time, the social side of the job changed me just as much as the technical side. I became comfortable walking into events where I didn't know anyone, introducing myself, asking people if I could photograph them, communicating with clients and directing people when I needed something for a photograph. By the end of my time there, I felt like I could talk to just about anybody. For someone who had never considered myself much of a networker, that was a huge change.

When People Started Knowing My Work

One of my favorite examples of that came through photographing Model Entertainment, a student fashion organization at Grand Valley. Over the course of my time with Promotions, I photographed around ten fashion shows. By continuing to show up, I started getting to know the people involved, and they started getting to know me too. I will never forget walking into one of their shows and hearing someone say, "This is Emily, our photographer." Then what felt like the entire room - probably around 75 ish people - said, "Hey, Emily." I remember thinking, no way everybody knows who I am. Coming from a very small high school, that hit me differently. I was used to knowing everyone because there simply weren't that many people to know. This was different. These people knew me because of the photographs I had made with them. My work had spoken for me before I ever really had the confidence to do that myself. I felt welcomed, and over time some of those relationships became much more than people I happened to photograph. There are people I met through that work who I still talk toand work with today. I also loved what those shows gave me creatively. I got to document fashion, personality, movement, beauty and art while making images alongside people who cared deeply about what they were creating. Those experiences became some of the strongest connections I made during college.

Learning the "Why"

As my confidence grew, I started becoming much more intentional about the technical side of photography too. I had always known when I liked an image, but eventually I became obsessed with understanding why I liked it. Why am I using this shutter speed? Why this aperture? Why is my light

positioned here? Why does this image feel balanced? There is a certain satisfaction in knowing that if somebody asked why I made a technical decision, I could justify it. To me, it almost feels like getting a good grade on a paper. Once I started understanding that feeling, I wanted more of it. Flash photography became a huge part of that growth.

When I first joined Promotions, I barely knew how to use flash. By the end, I was comfortable building lighting setups, balancing multiple lights and creating

the clean look I wanted for things like media days. I also became comfortable speaking up about the equipment we used, including advocating for new gear options when we needed them. One of the coolest results of that growth came when Grand Valley's women's club basketball team reached out and asked if I would photograph a media day for them through Promotions Office. For me, that was a dream DM. Basketball was already something I loved photographing, so having an entire team reach out because they wanted to work with me was one of those moments where I just thought, No way. It was also a moment where I could see the difference between the photographer I had been when I

started and the photographer I had become. Early on, I didn't even understand flash concepts. Now I could walk into a media day, build a lighting setup from scratch and know how I want it to look.

Getting in the Moment

When I recently looked through my Promotions portfolio as a whole, I noticed something that I hadn't necessarily planned from the beginning. A lot of my favorite photographs make you feel like you're inside the moment. That makes sense to me now because I like being inside the moment too. Student life isn't something I always want to photograph from across the room with a long lens. If I'm photographing a crowd, a concert, a celebration or an event, I want to feel like I'm part of the energy. I want the person looking at the image later to feel like they were there with me. That approach became especially important while photographing so many different parts of campus. Promotions gave me the opportunity to cover student organizations, concerts, fashion shows, campus traditions, cultural events and communities that I might not have experienced otherwise. I especially loved photographing events connected to the Office of Multicultural Affairs. One event I loved covering was the NPHC Yard Show.

There was history, tradition and legacy behind what I was photographing. Moments like that were part of what made Promotions become such an important part of my college experience.

More Than a Student Job

There were also plenty of moments where I genuinely thought, I get paid to do this? Photographing spring concerts from the front of the stage. Helping create sets for President's Ball productions.

Covering BigXthaPlug during my final spring concert senior year.

Getting access to experiences that most students would normally only see from the audience. Our Promotions team was largely student-run, with Bobby and Leah overseeing student photographers, videographers, designers and team leads. Having the ability to rent cameras, lenses, batteries and other gear through the office gave me room to experiment and photograph things I sometimes would not have had the equipment to cover otherwise. That access became especially valuable as I continued developing my sports photography.

Three Years Later

Eventually, I became an Advanced Photographer.

The title meant something to me, especially knowing that freshman-year me hadn't even made it through that first interview.

By then, I felt like I had a voice. I could walk into a large lighting project and understand what we were trying to build.

I could problem-solve. I could look at a photograph and think technically about what I wanted to change. I wasn't afraid to get into the middle of an event, talk to people or try something new. When my time with Promotions finally ended, it was emotional. So much of my college experience was connected to that office. I think freshman-year me would be shocked by how much one job ended up blossoming into: ten fashion shows, media days, concerts, major campus events, and countless people I met along the way and eventually becoming someone whose work people recognized before they even knew me personally. I always knew I could take photographs. Promotions helped me build the confidence to believe that I could be the photographer behind them, too.

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