By Maria Socorro Garcia
Sammy Mayo Jr. made the choice to leave his university during his first year and chose a different career path that would become his life-long passion – photography. He was offered an opportunity to work full time for the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as a photographer.
Mayo felt that university life was not for him. “Personally, it was draining inside, but I can’t express that to anyone because I don’t think anyone kind of felt what I felt,” Mayo explains.
At first, he was determined to finish his degree in mass communications, but life took a different direction when he started his internship at HUD in 2009. HUD required him to relocate to Washington, D.C. if he wanted the internship. It was not a difficult decision to leave Delaware State University and transfer to the Art Institute of Washington.
“Going to art school gave me the creative freedom, and it felt like home,” Mayo said.
During the summer of his internship at HUD, he was excited to work with the broadcasting department. He joined a crew that covered a court trial and helped the crew set up the video equipment and then sat behind the camera for three hours. He thought, “Man, this is boring. Is this what I really want to do for the next 20 years of my life?” He did not see creativity in what he was doing. He began to question if his decision to move to D.C. was right.
A guy named Rick Vargas worked as a photographer at HUD. Vargas worked with another photographer named Ron, who was not there quite often. Vargas took Mayo as a protégé and taught him a lot in photography. “In photography, you go out, you shoot and whatever you take a picture of is what you saw and how you see it. So whatever comes back, they see it through your eyes. That is the kind of creative freedom that I like,” Mayo said. He knew that photography is what he was meant to do.
Mayo describes himself as a self-determined person. He said he is very impatient, but in a good way. “When I was a kid, I would ask my mom to go to the mall, and she would tell me that we can go the next day. So I would just take my bike and go to the mall today. I guess that was a form of impatience because I was offered an easier route to get there, I just had to wait a day. But the impatience in me wanted to get there now and do it now and be there now. So I took my bike and took the harder route.”
Mayo grew up in the suburbs of Maryland but now lives in Washington, D.C. “The people of D.C. are impatient just like me. They are always on the go,” he said. People can brush past people in the D.C. Metro, but Mayo understands that can happen because he also had brushed past other people before. For Mayo, impatience is a good thing because it can keep someone focused and driven to obtain what one wants to achieve. Impatience can push someone to greatness.
Mayo has worked for HUD for six years now and has been covering events for the agency. He has no regrets in leaving the university to pursue his passion for photography.
Photo of Sammy Mayo Jr taken by Maria Socorro Garcia
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