It is one of those universal, proverbial statesments we all have made at some point in our lives.

When I grow up I want to be… I want to do…  I want to…

It is this question that I have never been able to answer with confidence.  I’m with someone who has known what he wanted to be since he was a little boy.  He wanted to save lives, to help people.  Of course if you ask him, he’ll just say he’s “thwarting natural selection“.  He’s a joker.

Ryan has wanted to do what he does since he was a little kid, it’s a noble job and while he’ll joke about his intentions, those who know him know the truth.

When I was a little kid I wanted to be a waiter at Luby’s Cafeteria.  Shooting for the stars there huh?  They don’t even have waiters, it’s a cafeteria for goodness sakes.

After that, I wanted to be a radio show host.  I took apart my clock radio and wired my Casio keyboard to the speaker.  I was on the radio!  Alas, only someone listening in my bedroom would have noticed.

With that behind me, I wanted to be an architech.  I got for my birthday an architech kit.  Drawing table, the special pencils and sharpeners, the gridlined tracing paper and a couple of books on the subject.  This lasted a good while, just up to the day we got our first real computer at home.  Then I wanted to be a computer scientist, and then an IP Lawyer and then…

It just never ended.  I switched my major from Engineering to Psychology to Political Science to Gender Studies to… Well now I’m General Studies focusing on Political Science, Gender Studies and Photography.

As far as jobs go, I’ve been an administrative assistant while at the same time I was the IT guy and all for the same company, I worked in the laboratory with the chemists.  Oh and I ran the shipping department.  I’ve been a barista, an assistant manager of a Starbucks.  I’ve worked as a registration rep for an emergency room, I do new media marketing for an ad agency and most recently have gotten into pro-photography.

My friend Max likes to point out this trend.  I can’t seems to focus myself on anything, I’m so interested in so many things.  But today I found something that shows exactly what I want to do.  Well, at least at this moment.

I love photography.  Absolutely love painting with light.  Last week when I was presenting my photography project to my class someone asked why I took the pictures the way that I do.  I did my best to explain what goes through my mind when I take a picture.

I don’t look at something and go click click and take pictures.  I create a story in my head, a fantasy that makes the simple picture I’m taking come to life.  It’s like an entire scene of a movie on a single frame.

Today, I saw something that hit me.  It’s what I want to do. I want to create films like this.  Beautiful in its simplicity.  What’s so unique about this video is quickly apparent.  The camera has been hacked to allow SLR lenses, like what I use on my Nikon.  These lenses with extremely low apertures allow for an incredibly shallow depth of field and low light shooting.  This video by Benjamin Reece captures exactly what I want to do.  Produce these emotionally powerful yet easily digestable films and share them with the world.

I love the idea of building something from scratch.  The music, the video and the production.  It’s really an exciting thing for me, now can I make money from this?  Probably not, at least not in the beginning.  So this won’t actually be what I do when I grow up, which face it, really is like now.  But maybe it can be my hobby, my side gig.  The video, as you will see below, is just great.

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Let me know what you think.  I hope you enjoyed the short film.  I thought it was awesome.