CreativeMornings - May

Hi!

It has been way too long since I've posted something!  This draft has been almost done for a while and I finally finished it.  As always, CreativeMornings was amazing last month (we were out of town for June's event!).  They said it was the biggest event Baltimore's CM has had with over 250 people!



In May, the topic was Revolution and the speaker was Devin Allen, a 26-year-old local photographer who recently found one of his pictures on the cover of Time Magazine (among many other places)!



Check out his Instagram to see his incredible pics!

Devin's talk took place at Center Stage, a nice theater near us where I have gone to another CreativeMornings several months ago.



Here are two Time.com articles, here and here, about Devin.



The sponsors for this monthly event are Dooby's, Strangers with Style, Stuckey Design, and Shine Creative.

Dooby's provided breakfast, as usual, and this time we got delish strawberry rhubarb sticky buns, jalapeno corn muffin, and hot OR iced coffee!!  The iced coffee was a new addition, at least to me!  So good.



This time, the talk was interview-style with Katie Boyts, the Baltimore CM host, asking Devin questions.



It was so neat to hear Devin talk about his experiences taking photographs while protesting throughout the unrest that has occurred (and is still occurring) in Baltimore.  He is not just photographing these events, but participating in them.  He said that he was nervous for this but he seemed so comfortable! 

He was super funny:



He had interesting answers for every question and we loved hearing his views on everything that has been happening.



He is a self-taught photographer and he uses a Fiji camera that has wi-fi so when he takes a pic that he wants to share, he sends it to his phone and then posts in on his social media pages.  He told several stories about what was going on right when he took many of his pictures that have gone viral.  We got to hear about his phone calls with people from Time Magazine, about when he found out that his photo made the cover, and when he, his mother (who was at the event), and his grandmother were crying on the phone because they were so happy!

Devin works with adults with autism over night and during the day he takes pictures.  He says that he doesn't really sleep!  He mentioned that he had been considering moving to NYC before all of this happened to try to get established as a photographer, but now he doesn't really feel like he needs to take that step!  He's staying in Baltimore and wants to continue taking pictures to show all sides of what is going on here.  He also wants to teach photography to kids in the community.  

This event was so big that the Q&A at the end was done via Twitter, and questions were selected for Katie to ask Devin on stage.



Before and after the event, you could donate money to go toward a new camera for Devin.



 If you did, you got to choose one of his prints.  We each got a really cool print and he signed them after!





Here's a great interview with Devin by Scout, a new series by Shine Creative.

Like I mentioned, we were out of town for June's CreativeMornings, but I hope we'll be here for July's event!

Thanks for reading!