Sam Copeland

Design built on photography — taking the stories hiding in everyday images and giving them shape across print, screen, and motion.

Based — San Francisco, CA
Practice — Photography, graphic design, motion graphics

Yerba Buena, SF — 2022

01 — about

I'm a graphic designer with a passion for visual storytelling — bringing together photography, design, video, and digital content, and treating each photograph as the starting point for the design work that follows.

Trained at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, I've worked freelance and in-house across editorial, brand, and cultural contexts — from a residential design firm to fashion campaigns — with a particular interest in museums, archives, and public-facing visual communication. Seeking opportunities that value craft, organization, collaboration, and thoughtful image-making.

Based

San Francisco, CA

Education

Academy of Art University
San Francisco

Practice

Graphic design
Photography
Video editing
Social media & digital content

02 — archiveField archive

Super 8 Summer — San Francisco, 2022

03 — workSelected Work

01PhotographyView gallery →

02DesignView projects →

03CinematographyView films →

Publications

Connecticut Cottages & GardensPhotography published while working with Caren Rideau's Kitchen Design Group.

San Francisco ChroniclePhotography published in connection with work for Square Pie Guys.

Additional workPhotographic and design work developed across editorial, brand, and cultural projects.

04 — shopPrints & publications

Prints and publications are being prepared for sale. Check back soon, or get in touch directly for enquiries.

samhoneyham@gmail.com

05 — experience

2024 — present

Photography, Graphic Design & Digital Content

Caren Rideau's Kitchen Design Group — Santa Monica, CA. Photography, graphic design, and digital content support for a residential kitchen design firm — capturing and editing visual material, organizing image libraries, preparing assets for web and client-facing materials, and managing social media content and scheduling.

Current

2021 — 2022

Video Editing & Visual Content (Freelance)

Henge Fashion — China. Edited and delivered video content using Adobe Premiere Pro for fashion-focused digital campaigns, working with provided footage and creative direction to produce polished visual outputs aligned with brand identity.

Freelance

06 — skills

Photography & cinematography

Film & digital photography
Super 8 & 16mm cinematography
Camera operation
Lighting & composition
Image editing

Design & post-production

Photoshop, Illustrator
InDesign
Premiere Pro
After Effects
Lightroom

Digital & social

Social media planning
Content scheduling
Visual asset organization
Website content updates

Professional

Visual storytelling
Collaboration
Organization
Attention to detail
Managing multiple timelines

07 — contact

Let's make something.

samhoneyham@gmail.com

Open to photography, graphic design, video, and digital content work — with a particular interest in museums, archives, and public-facing visual communication.

For project enquiries, include a brief description and timeline. Response within a few days.

Field dispatch

Mojave Skeleton

a.k.a. Mo Skelton

The camera goes where comfort doesn't. No staging. No return visits. What happens once, in the light it actually happened in.

01 — field archive

Unnamed road

Border light study

Transit #7

Late heat

Witness

Frequency

Dry run

The last hour

02 — series

Dead Heat

Forty photographs made along a single route over three summers. No plan. No return.

35mm film, 2022–2024

Border Frequencies

Journalistic study of threshold spaces — the geography of in-between.

Medium format, 2023

III

Witness

Portraits of people encountered once. Names unknown. Locations withheld.

35mm film, 2021–2023

The Long Exposure

Night photography along empty infrastructure — roads, towers, lots.

Large format, 2022

03 — people, places, things

People

The Witness, unnamed

Recurring subject of the Witness series. Met once, photographed once.

The Border Crew

A loose group encountered over three summers along the Dead Heat route.

The Night Watchman

Subject of The Long Exposure's only portrait frame.

Places

Unnamed road, Mojave basin

Returned to four times across two years. Never the same light twice.

The border crossing, unmarked

Site of Border Frequencies. Coordinates withheld.

The empty lot, midnight

Recurring location across The Long Exposure series.

Things

35mm, Tri-X 400

The standard stock. Pushed one stop in low light.

A borrowed tripod

Used for every long exposure since 2022.

Field notebook, water-damaged

Contains the only written record of locations and dates.

04 — approach & contact

Photography as witness, not documentation. What happens once, in the light it actually happened in, is the only truth worth chasing. Enquiries — mojave@samcopeland.com

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Statement

Shlomo Garten

Duration is not time. It is the shape of attention, given form.

01 — works

Dead Channel

Single-channel video. Looped transmission signals between stations that no longer exist.

14'32"

Interior Monologue for Two Screens

Dual-channel installation. Two subjects speak simultaneously. Neither addresses the other.

22'00"

Rehearsal for an Event That Did Not Occur

Performance document. A choreography of preparation. The event is withheld.

8'17"

Frequency Study No. 3

Archival footage, re-timed to a resting heartbeat.

33'00"

The Body Delays

Three-channel installation. Reactions to stimuli that have not yet occurred.

18'00"

Empty Auditorium

A performance staged for no audience. Documentation of the performance is the work.

45'00"

02 — stills

Dead Channel

Two Screens

Rehearsal

Frequency Study

The Body Delays

Empty Auditorium

03 — statement

Video as container for absence. The frame holds what was never quite captured. The work does not represent experience — it occupies the gap where experience was.

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Alias 03 — Word, image & design

Arsensius Florette

"The image is a word that ran out of patience."

Conceptual work at the intersection of text, image, and designed form. Publications, prints, and works where language becomes visual matter.

Scroll for written works

01 — selected pieces

A Lexicon for Uncertain Surfaces

Artist book, 48pp

Definitions for conditions that have no agreed-upon names, illustrated with photographs of ambiguous textures.

Letters Never Sent to a Geography

Print series, 12 works

Each print addresses a landscape as though it were a person who left without notice.

III

The Soft Grammar of Looking

Essay, graphic design

On photographic captions, and what they quietly forbid the image from saying.

Catalogue of Provisional Truths

Installation, text & image

Forty statements, each one true for exactly the duration of its reading.

02 — written worksThe shelf

A Lexicon for Uncertain Surfaces

Letters Never Sent

The Soft Grammar of Looking

Catalogue of Provisional Truths

Marginalia

Portrait of a Room After Departure

A Lexicon for Uncertain Surfaces

Artist book — 48pp — 2024

Definitions for conditions that have no agreed-upon names. Illustrated with photographs of ambiguous textures — the book treats uncertainty as a material in its own right, something to be defined rather than resolved.

Letters Never Sent to a Geography

Print series, 12 works — 2022

Each print addresses a landscape as though it were a person who left without notice — an epistolary project where the recipient is a place, not a person.

The Soft Grammar of Looking

Essay, graphic design — 2024

On photographic captions, and what they quietly forbid the image from saying. A caption is a form of arrest — it holds the image at a border and demands it declare its purpose.

Catalogue of Provisional Truths

Installation, text & image — 2023

Forty statements, each one true for exactly the duration of its reading. The catalogue does not resolve into a single argument — it accumulates instead, like sediment.

Marginalia

Publication, 120pp — 2023

An edited anthology of notes written in the margins of library books, arranged by subject rather than author — a chorus of anonymous, half-formed thought.

Portrait of a Room After Departure

Photography & text — 2022

Hotel rooms photographed immediately after checkout, each accompanied by an invented account of the stay that never claims to be true.

03 — a note on the work

Text and image are not a hierarchy. One does not illustrate the other. They press against each other — and in that friction, something briefly true appears.

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