Life & Work with David Futey

Today we’d like to introduce you to David Futey.

Hi David, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
How did I get to today… A few years ago, my wife, son, and I were discussing paid jobs and volunteering. With a few minutes of thought, I recounted at least 21 paying jobs and several volunteer positions I have held. The paying jobs started in a northeast Ohio steel town as a 12-year-old paperboy delivering papers from house to house on foot.

My other jobs include working in my father’s small construction business, pumping gas before self-serve, a bus driver for a university, bartender, waiter, short-order cook, drummer, award-winning author, photographer, adjunct faculty, various IT positions at Kent State and Stanford University, reporter, basketball official, and a museum manager in Colorado Springs.

Throughout my adult life, my volunteer roles have included participating in and leading international IT organizations, performing maintenance on housing on Pine Ridge Reservation, assisting programs within my churches, and being a board member for basketball officiating organizations and non-profits.

Currently, I find myself a basketball official, substitute teacher, and reporter and photographer for Our Community News (ocn.me), a co-op, non-profit newspaper that serves and informs the Tri-Lakes (Monument, Palmer Lake, Woodmoor) area just north of Colorado Springs. Photography has been a constant in my life since receiving a Yashica camera as a teen. The OCN provides me with opportunities to continue my interest in documentative photography to the benefit of the community.

OCN, which was started in 2001 and reports on community administrations such as town councils, fire, water, school, and other districts. I am one of the longest-serving members of OCN, having photographed and reported on many community events. I have photographed the annual Monument Fourth of July parade, over 160 music events performed by local, national, and international performers, and other community events over the past 14 years. I have photographed concerts by Phil Keaggy, Colin Hay, Charlie Daniels, Billy Bob Thornton and the Boxmasters, Judy Collins, Peter Yarrow, and Shawn Colvin among others.

It was difficult to select the photos I included to represent my photography, not only because of the quantity, easily over 36,000, but also the variety, landscape, abstract, portrait/wedding/graduation, commercial, and inform. It is not so much the quantity but the diversity of what I have photographed and moments I have chronicled that I look upon with fondness and also that my photos have been used for a variety of educational, information, promotional and other purposes.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Few roads are smooth. Through my various positions, I learned that customer service is integral to any form of employment and engagement. Understanding the customer and their needs, their expectations, and knowing how to better that expectation by even 1% changes the dynamic and perception of you in the customer’s view.

The customer could be the staff member you lead and advise to assist in their growth and development, the student you teach to enhance their knowledge and learning skills, the person who is dependent on the IT services you oversee for them to achieve their responsibilities, the landscape, person or other entity represented in your photo that represents them at that moment.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
My philosophy is Lead, Teach, and Inspire, which I attempt to carry through with all my endeavors. As a photographer, capture the moment that is fleeting to inspire an emotion, a remembrance, or a concept. Through my professional IT career, teaching, officiating, and other employment and avocations, I looked for opportunities to lead in front or within given the organization’s need and to mentor and assist others toward their improvement and their goals.

Growing up in the family construction business, I learned to not only see what needs to be fixed but improve upon what is there, to make it better. It has led me to seek opportunities where I can make a difference in those around me and the broader community.

Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
1. Received the 2008 Benjamin Franklin Award from PMA, the Independent Book Publishers Association, for being the winner of the Science/Environment category for co-authored book Landforms of Southern Utah. I was the photographer for the majority of photos in this photo book.

2. In June 2008, I collaborated with the Smokebrush Foundation in Colorado Springs on a gallery show titled SHELTER: An artistic expression on homelessness. The show ran for three weeks and included a public forum to discuss the issues and causes of homelessness in Colorado Springs.

Besides assisting with the gallery show I contributed photos of abandoned shopping carts from San Francisco and Colorado Springs as a metaphor for the homeless being abandoned by society. I have included one of my many shopping cart photos, taken near Kezar Stadium in San Francisco, in my submission.

3. In June 1999, I co-chaired an IT conference at Kent State University for IT professionals from across the country. My co-chair and I were able to secure vendor support to rent out the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland for our closing event.