Andrew Laker standing beside Ogle Lake on a hiking trail

Like I said,

I make stuff.

For most of my life, I’ve had trouble answering the question, “What do you do?”

The short answer changes depending on when you ask.

I’ve been a photojournalist, filmmaker, web developer, writer, researcher, designer and probably a few other things I’m forgetting.

I’ve also detasseled corn, refurbished hospital beds, twirled signs on street corners, worked as an inflatable cowboy and performed as a singing cop. I have no idea what any of that qualifies me to do next.

The longer answer is simpler.

I like figuring things out, and I like making things.

Where it started

I started out making pictures.

A collage of Andrew Laker's press credentials, media passes and event badges from his years as a newspaper photojournalist. — Sixteen years of press passes, sidelines, assignments and places I probably wasn’t getting into without one.

I spent 16 years as a newspaper photojournalist, which meant getting sent somewhere I knew very little about and figuring out what mattered before the deadline.

I photographed presidents, fires, football games, ordinary people on extraordinary days and extraordinary people on ordinary ones.

Journalism taught me how to see, how to listen, how to ask questions and how to turn something complicated into something another person could understand.

I eventually stopped working for newspapers.

I didn’t stop making things.

Photography → Film

Film → Web

Web → Applications

Writing → Books

Curiosity → Pretty much everywhere else.

These days

Somewhere along the way, curiosity became a career.

For more than a decade, I’ve worked at the intersection of healthcare, technology, design and communication.

I build websites and applications. I work through accessibility, privacy, analytics and user-experience problems. I help make complicated systems understandable. Sometimes the solution is code. Sometimes it’s a photograph, a film, a better process or simply asking the right question.

I’ve never been especially interested in staying neatly inside one job description.

The other stuff

Then there are the things that don’t fit neatly anywhere.

16mm film

Cartoons

Bookbinding

Genealogy

Maps

Apps

Baseball cards

Whatever’s next

I wonder if I could…

Still curious

I’m not very good at leaving interesting things alone.

Away from work, I’m usually making something there, too. I hike. I write. I take pictures. I build things. I occasionally resurrect projects that have been unfinished for 25 years.

I’m interested in old cameras, new technology, obscure history, physical craft and ideas that begin with a question and end, sometimes much later, with something that didn’t exist before.

This website is where all of that gets to live together.