Two years ago, Justin Washington as a sophomore started his photography career under the name Jusseeds. 2 years later senior year, Washington, and his brand grew.

Interviewed in February 2022, there is much to recap, and much to follow up on. Washington started his brand Jusseeds-Visuals in late 2021. He started photography in 2020 on impulse and decided that was something that he was into. Later on, changed the name to Jusseeds and focused on taking pictures, editing, and learning new styles. As time went on, Washington started to explore video editing as well. Washington worked on solo photography assignments as well as bigger, longer projects. Last time, his project “Black Friday” was to photograph and highlight the black figures in his life, followed by a caption. This was a larger project that was done over a month. Since this project, he has grown his brand tremendously. 

Washington now has two parts to his brand. Jusseeds and JUSCreatedbyCam. Around this time he started to learn about values and how he wanted to be perceived by others. Jusseeds went in an unexpected direction. He started getting offers to take pictures in exchange for money. Washington didn’t mind this, however, this wasn’t his intention. He wanted to create, not profit. He wanted to do photography because this was something he liked doing. So far, JUSCreatedbyCam has been his main focus. His goal is to do some type of project before he graduates. He wants to create one full-concept project.  He wants to create an organized, well-thought-out project to be able to look at and say, “I created that.” That aside, he’s learning that he can’t plan everything out. Him tomorrow isn’t the same person as him today, and therefore won’t think the same. He viewed himself 2 years ago as a micromanager. He always had a plan for things and specific dates and needed it to be planned out. He now is just letting things fall in place as they will. Now as a senior, he’s not doing as much with the two, however, it’s still a focus he would like to continue.

Recently Washington got to take part in writing a play. The play he wrote about was about gun violence. It was a last-minute decision to enter the contest, made aware by his director. Washington thought it would be a good experience, and money if he won. By this point he had been writing for a while so he wanted to see what he could do. 244 kids entered into the contest and only 6 were picked. Washington was one of the six. He was shocked when he got the phone call that he was selected. They had a Zoom meeting until November 6 the 6 students flew out to Washington to see their play come alive. Washington said the play went well. He viewed this experience as a lesson on perspective because he wrote that play with his own idea, and then saw people act it out differently and have different thoughts on it. Justin had no process while writing this. He just wrote about the thoughts that came to his head. He said isolation was what helped him most in writing the play.

As a senior, college is on Washington’s mind. He wants to major and pursue acting. For a while, he thought he wanted to go to school for writing and/or photography, but he realizes now he wants to do acting. He’s been acting since he was a kid. He stopped for a while because he was unsure what he wanted to do, however, he knows now that’s what he wants. His dream college is Howard. When he gets to college, he plans on putting Jusseeds and JUSCreatedbyCam on pause. He’s still thinking about it, however, he needs to focus on the start of college before he works on further projects. He defined his senior year as “testing”. He’s made a lot of realizations about himself, he’s learning to be more independent and be his own person.

Two years ago Washington wanted people to know how serious he is about this. He believes that society puts labels on creativity and he wanted to break those boundaries. Now, he wants people to know to just keep growing. Don’t let your own ideas influence your intuition. You’re not always gonna know what’s best but you know where you want to go. Embrace being a new person each day and embrace change. To him, this is the best thing you can do because you’ll slowly become the person you want to be.