My digital cover letter for CUSA Photographer 2018

My name is Tristan Oliff and I am a half South African, half Canadian student Political Science at Carleton University where I have been since 2015. While photography has always been a topic which had interested me, I only bought my first camera in 2016 shortly before embarking on a two month backpacking trip around Peru. It was here that I really discovered my passion for the art as I tried to capture images of the mesmerizing locations which I visited.

During this trip to Peru, I was able to capture some incredible pictures of a place called the Rainbow Mountains (pictured below). When I came back to Canada, I submitted one of these photos to National Geographic and to my surprise, it was selected under their editors spotlight as their Top Shot of the day and later one of their Top Shots of the month. This was an amazing honor for me and served as my motivation to try and seek to make a living in the field of photography.

Over the course of the following 3 years, I slowly developed my photography into a business and shaped my skills towards providing commercial services. This first started by offering or being asked to take head shots and lifestyle photos of people who had seen my photos through instagram. As my portfolio developed though, I began charge for my work specializing especially in commercial event and portraiture photography.

In the time since then, I have been the official photographer for events such as the 2017 & 2018 UNAC Youth Innovation Summit in Parliament and the 2017 & 2018 Canadian International Model United Nations for the United Nations Association of Canada, the 2017 Norman Paterson School of International Affairs Gala, the inaugural 2017 Carleton University Women in Business conference and the 2018 PAPM Gala. On top of this, I have also been contracted to photograph fashion shoots and landscape photography jobs. Below are highlights from some of these events:

PAPM Gala 2018

UNAC Youth Innovation Summit 2018

CANIMUN 2018 ball

First and foremost, I think the most important reason why I would love the position of CUSA photographer is because I have had nothing but wonderful experiences over the past 3 years at Carleton University and I would appreciate the opportunity to give back to the University using my photography skills. I fell in love with photography, developed my skills and began to sell my services all while attending Carleton and I could think of no better way of ending my time there than being hired as one of their official photographers.

I also believe that I am a very qualified candidate for the position and would do great work as the CUSA photographer. I hold two years of professional experience running my photography business where I have covered multiple events gaining proficiency in backdrop photography, flash photography, low-light photography and creative photography. Meanwhile, this experience has also meant that I have mastered photo editing software such as lightroom and photoshop in order to deliver my final product to my customers. Finally, the two-day photo back guarantee which my business provides on all photography assignments shows that I have experience working under pressure in order to deliver final images as quickly as possible.

While I am a professional photographer, I often prefer to see myself as a content creator. Whether it is through my blogging (which can be further viewed through my work on this site Hive account@tristanoliff) or through the creative photos which I take to share on my instagram, I love to create content for others to consume, enjoy or appreciate.

Thus, beyond the regular photography work attached to the position, I would love to have the opportunity to transfer this passion for content creation into my work as a CUSA photographer. This would mean creating content which Carleton Students would enjoy to consume or be interested by, and would make them even more passionate about attending the university. Here are some examples of content creation projects which I could facilitate as CUSA photographer:

Faces of Carleton

My idea for this project would be to run a "faces of Carleton series". This would involve finding different Carleton students every week to take a creative portrait of somewhere around the school grounds and have them tell us a little more about their life story. This could then be compiled into a weekly post on the CUSA website or CUSA social media outlets and would both create interesting content, as well as show interaction and communication between the Student Association and the Carleton students. This project would also be able to showcase the incredible diversity of the students who attend the university.

The history of Carleton through photography

While the title of this project might not be as catchy as the last, I believe it could be just as interesting. For this project, I would go out and take multiple landscape photographs inside and out of many of Carleton's buildings. Then, these images would be compiled into a blog post which would share a bunch of interesting information and facts about these buildings. For example, when they were built, what the architects wanted to do with the building and perhaps how the utility of the buildings have changed over the years.

This project would both be a good way to showcase the beauty of the Carleton Campus while also giving students a chance to learn more about the university where they study. Especially since most students will spend almost half a decade at the university, yet leave still not knowing much about the place.

All in all, I appreciate being given the opportunity to apply for CUSA photographer and I hope I outlined some compelling reasons for why I should be considered for the position. I truly believe that I would be a great fit for the job and could bring great experience and photographic creativity to the office.