Tag: Design

Hanging out at the 2021 LA AUTO SHOW!

I’ve always said that following your passions will lead you to interesting places! As my luck would have it, following my passion for automobiles has led me to the stage at the 2021 LA Auto Show as the recipient of the Hispanic Motor Press Foundation Scholarship Award!

The Hispanic Motor Press Foundation Scholarship is a scholarship dedicated to supporting young Hispanics pursuing a career in journalism focusing on the vehicle and transportation industries, with emphasis on the technology of the motor vehicle.

I applied to this scholarship because even though I’m not technically studying journalism, I am a transportation design student who does automotive journalism on the side as a hobby. This blog is the perfect example of that! Well, I’m happy to say that I was picked as the winner and I was presented with the award on stage at the LA Auto Show!

Of course, this wasn’t the only highlight of my day. This was the first time I had ever been to the LA Auto Show! So naturally my shutterbug instincts took over and I was snapping away at every interesting display or concept car I crossed while hunting down designers and other industry insiders to talk and network with!

So, please enjoy these photos from the 2021 LA Auto Show! Also I wanted to give a very special thanks to the following individuals!:

  • Ricardo Rodriguez-Long
  • Jon Rosner
  • Aaron M. Sanchez
  • Jose Vargas Ulloa
  • Chris Benjamin
  • Angelica Willard

Thank you so much!

by Categories: Event, Gallery AddedTags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

I really, really want to go back to college…

Photo by Burst on Pexels.com

Do you ever get the feeling that you made the wrong decision?

Way back in 2009 I got my Associate of Arts degree from my local Community College. I studied design and computer graphics, thinking I wanted to be an industrial designer or something along those lines. But, tuition for some of the better-known design colleges was out of my budget. I mean, we’re talking about $100k+ Bachelor’s Programs. For a family that had two sons planning on going to college, it was hard to justify. I decided to rethink what I wanted to do and take a look at some of the more affordable options in the DC Metro area.

That’s when I found the game design program at the University of Baltimore. I went in, made some really cool stuff, and then I graduated with honors and a really cool thesis project specializing in Augmented Reality Technology! A year after I graduated, I joined a startup in my field when most of my colleagues were still working at Starbucks! And I did it all debt-free! I was on top of the world!

Me and a team of some other really bright people came up with a concept for an Augmented Reality First Person Shooter years before this technology became mainstream! I was really proud of the work we did.

5 years later, I’m broke, I’m constantly working for scraps, and I’m pretty much homeless. I banked on that “revolutionary start-up” being the catalyst for my success in Silicon Valley, but that ended up not happening. Instead, the start-up failed right around the time I got my first apartment, and interviewing with companies doing similar things was next to impossible because my degree didn’t say “Stanford” on it. I was unemployed for two years messing around with a camera and teaching myself photography because it was the skill I had to fall back on, next to graphic design and website building.

Of course, taking photos is one thing, but getting anyone to buy anything is a completely different ball game. Likes and shares don’t pay my bills! And now here I am, writing in my own personal echo chamber pining for the time where I was sitting in my algebra class doodling cars in my notebook, saying “I’m going to be the nex