I am a professional photographer with an associate's degree in graphic design and web development, living in Glendale, Arizona. I currently love my full-time job at Best Buy, and value getting to work with electronics and interact with like-minded people every day. I still live at home with my parents, but don’t get to spend much time there, I’m often bouncing around town between work, photography, and spending time on adventures. I got into photography 5 years ago and have kept learning and pushing myself in the art since. Much of my work is colorful, beautiful landscapes from the Southwestern United States. I am always striving for “the perfect shot” as I explore the places I travel to.
Why Photography?
I consider my beginning the summer of 2016. I went on a family cruise to the Caribbean and took a ton of pictures and videos with my phone and GoPro to document the whole trip. I posted each day’s pictures on social media with a little story about what I did that day. The posts from those 7 days got a lot of good feedback from friends and followers, commenting on the photos and the narratives. After returning home, I wanted to keep the trend up so I continued to take pictures from various places I would travel to, mainly just around Phoenix on weekend drives. The support continued as friends kept engaging with my pictures. I had one or two good friends at the time that were also into photography (but way better at it), so I always looked up to their work. They were always there for encouragement and feedback as I progressed, which I was always grateful for. For Christmas of 2016, my parents got me my own DSLR camera which opened the door for possibilities to come. Summer of 2017 was my next big step in photography when I went on another family vacation, this time to Northern Arizona and Southern Utah. This provided me with tons of photo opportunites where I saw beautiful scenes and learned a ton. As the months went on, I continued to expand my knowledge and grow my collection of photographs. As I got older, I was also able to travel more, with a few trips to California, Mexico, NYC, and most recent: the big island of Hawaii for my 22nd birthday in April of 2021. The support from my friends, family, co-workers, teachers, and even strangers, has always motivated me to continue pursuing what I love. Each day it feels more and more like a dream, with new opportunites, new equipment, and new locations. This is why I love photography.
I created this website in July of 2017 after a vacation to Northern Arizona and Southern Utah where I captured some of my favorite images to date. I wanted to show off those images, and potentially sell them. At the time, I had no experience with creating a website, I didn’t have a job, and I didn’t have much money. What I did have though, was a full month before school started. This gave me time to teach myself much of the required knowledge to piece together the first design of my website. The name “JocePicz” (pronounced: Jock-uh-picks) comes from my last name “Jocewicz” (pronounced: Jock-uh-witz), just change “...wicz” to “...picz” (as in pics...pictures). I wasn’t doing it for a full time buisness, I just wanted the knowledge involved in creating websites. The first version wasn’t perfect at all, and it quickly became outdated. In October of 2017 I updated it with a new color scheme, and some fresh images that I had accumulated; but yet again, it had problems and became outdated. I then got caught up in school, more photography stuff, and everyday life which moved my website to the back of my mind. After my NYC trip in June of 2018, I knew I needed to completely redo my website from the ground up. During the fall semester of 2018, I took 2 web development classes, 2 graphic design classes and a business class which gave me the confidence to begin working on the re-birth of JocePicz. That brings us to where we are today: with a bright, vibrant, fresh website, full of over 500 total pictures on display, each with a unique story behind them. Thanks for taking the time to look around!
My Good Friend Hunter
Hunter is a part of many of these pictures and videos. He is my travel partner, my camera assistant, and my go-to guy for anything that comes up. He, like me, is a college student and part time retail worker that has a passion for photography on the side. He survived Leukemia cancer during high school, and has sinced worked closely with the Make-A-Wish Foundation as a speaker and ambassador for events and fundraisers. We met while playing baseball in high school, and soon became pretty good friends. He became interested in my photo/video work so we often talked about camera tricks, new equipment, and potential photo locations for the next sunrise/sunset. After a few months he was right alongside my quality of work, so we often partnered for photoshoots and video edits. We both always challenged each other for the better photo while on adventures (these usually involved standing next to a cliff) and we were constantly growing and learning. In early November of 2018, Hunter was hospitalized with what started as a bad sore throat. Doctors couldn’t figure out what the exact problem or cause was, so he was treated for many conditions at once. He had bad days and good ones, but every time I visited, he at least knew who I was. One visit we both sat there and showed the nurses one of our adventure videos we had put together, and talked to them about all our equipment, experiences, and dreams.
Hunter didn’t make it through the morning on December 6th, 2018.
We had talked about many things while driving from place to place, often in the car for hours. While sitting on the rim of the Grand Canyon, I remember him saying, “At this point, with all we’ve done and seen, I could die tomorrow and I’d be ok with it”. I agreed. He was 20 years old. We both knew our days are finite, and you never know when that end will come. We did our best each day, each adventure, to live in pure joy of the moment. Most of our day trips took place on Tuesdays or Thursdays. We never had school, and we were able to request them off of work. Those 2 days were our window to escape our regular life and go see somewhere new. We had school and work yesterday, we will have it tomorrow... but today is our day to be on our own, with pure freedom to create as much fun as we can. When the sun rises tomorrow, it’s back to normal; but we control today. This state of mind: to stand on the edge, eat junk food, stay up late, spend your money, live fast, seek discomfort, and enjoy every moment is one that disregards the future, and dismisses the past. All that matters is the now, to create as many memories as possible, and now I know why.
