About

Hello! Tsia̍h pá buē 食飽未?

I’m Erica Kawamoto Hsu. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. As a teenager, I loved practicing figure drawing and darkroom photography.

During college at UC Berkeley, I tutored incarcerated people preparing for their GED at San Quentin State Prison. After college, I moved abroad to Taipei, where I tutored young English learners, aged 5-17, for 2 years and gained experience as an English copywriter at an international creative agency. For 5 years, I tutored 2 autistic artists in the San Gabriel Valley in blogging.

For over a decade, I photographed coverage of events and conferences and created images for marketing and communications projects for organizations including Girl Geek X, Downtown Women’s Center, Westridge School for Girls, The Kresge Foundation, Arcade Agency Tokyo, TechZulu, and Women 2.0.

Before becoming a photographer, I produced webinars as a senior webinar producer for a fast-growing online media startup in San Francisco, trained in digital media at BAVC Media, and created my first video and multimedia project, fly project TV.

I learned the business side of photography by assisting an agent representing commercial still and motion artists worldwide in LA and a photo agency in SF with their marketing and social media.

Aside from photography, I have produced a mobile race app for the San Francisco Marathon, international audio projects for a language e-learning platform in Tokyo, and bilingual social media content in Japanese and English for Women in Technology Japan.

I graduated with a BA from University of California, Berkeley — designed my own major through Interdisciplinary Studies Field and named it Culture, Power, and Difference. I hold a digital marketing certificate from BAVC Media.

I took a Taiwanese Language DeCal at UC Berkeley, studied beginner Mandarin Chinese at the Mandarin Training Center at NTNU 師大 after college, and learned Japanese at Gardena Buddhist Church and Sawtelle Gakuin during childhood.

I enjoy biking, eating shaved ice, drawing, and learning to speak Taiwanese.

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