The Kosraean Photographer Janida bakes, makes, designs and shoots
The Kosraean Photographer Janida bakes, makes, designs and shoots
Micronesian Monday Feature
Janida Bagadouwe is the focus of this week’s Micronesian Monday Feature. She grew in Kosrae and is now in the states, pursuing her creative passions.
Janida Bagadouwe is a self-taught photographer, baker, cake decorator, and she recently launched her online clothing business featuring Micronesian-specific designs.
The mom of four is used to working hard.
“I think it’s how I grew up back home in Kosrae,” Janida, also known as Janie, recalled. “ My dad, he used to have a restaurant, market, he fish, he farmed. So he’s a really hard-working man. So we grow up, all we do is work.”
Janie is half-Pohnpeian and half-Kosraean. She remembered how she and her siblings would wake up at four in the morning and go to the mountains and tend to their farm. At the time they had minimal tools but they made it work. After school, she watched her schoolmates go to the beach knowing they’d be able to swim and play. Meanwhile, she and her siblings, also headed to the ocean, had a different purpose.
“After school, we have to go fish,” Janie recalled. “Me and my little brothers, we slept at the beach, to get the nets up and all get the fish out of the net, waiting for the next wave to come in and all that.”
Fast forward to when she and her high-school-sweetheart-turned-husband moved to the states after her husband joined the military. Janie got a job at a restaurant and quickly rose up the ranks and in four years she was taking care of the whole facility, she said.
Compared to the manual labor she grew up doing back home, the mostly automated restaurant scene was a breeze to navigate.
“Back home we don’t have a lot of tools, so coming here it’s very easy,” Janie said. She remembered calling her parents and telling them about all the technology. Her father has since passed away but his lessons and his words remain etched in Janie’s memory.
When she’d tell him about a new accomplishment in her life, her father reminded her to appreciate the blessings in her life and remain humble.
When she had her second child and her husband was deployed, she decided to stay at home with the kids full-time. She felt herself getting bored when the kids were down for their naps or otherwise occupied.
She remembered calling her dad, complaining. Again, her dad reminded her to appreciate the blessings in her life.
“He was like, ‘Every stage in life is different. At this time, you’re a stay-at-home mom. Your kids will grow up and you’re going to miss that age,’” Janie said.
It’s a time that she won’t get back, her father reminded her.
Still, Janie was itching to do something more. She was used to filling her days with productive work. Her dad suggested she get a hobby.
Around that same time, in 2014, she and her husband went to a garage sale and they came across a DSLR camera, a Nikon 3100 that was priced at $100.
The woman selling it was a fellow military wife and took photographs professionally. She told Janie it was a good camera to start with and told her there are tutorials on YouTube and it’s easy to learn. They decided to buy the camera.
Janie put the camera on a shelf, curious but still hesitant about where to start.
“Then my husband said, ‘If you’re not going to use that, you sell it because it’s $100 to put it up on the shelf,’” she said. “So I said, ‘You know what, I’ll just start using it.’”
She started taking photos of her kids and posting them on her Facebook page. Her friends saw them and asked if she could take their family photos. She was hesitant but agreed.
Now that she had her first client, Janie wanted to make sure she did the best that she could. She dove into her camera research, looking up tutorials online. On her way to meet her friend, she was already nervous and then she checked the camera bag and saw she forgot the camera battery. She had to drive back home to get it, adding to her anxiety.
Once there, she started taking photos and staging the family. The family’s two little boys started to fuss and Janie started to sweat literally and figuratively.
“I almost cried because I didn’t get what I was picturing in my mind,” she said. She finished the shoot without tears. Once she was at home and looked at the photos, she realized they were better than she thought they would be. The quality was good and the family looked great. Janie found she liked the candid photos much more than the ones where she had everyone posing.
“You get the reality of the family, their personality,” she said. “That’s when I fell in love, like, this is awesome. The moment, capturing, freezing the moment is amazing.”
Janie didn’t earn any money from the first photo shoot with her friend and neither were subsequent shoots that Janie booked. What she lost in possible income, she gained in experience.
And after a while, as she improved her skills, Janie started to charge for her photography sessions. She came across a free photography workshop one day signed up for lessons every Saturday. She learned about lighting and depth of field and angles and was more comfortable using the camera in Manual mode, instead of auto mode.
Janie decided to create an Instagram account to showcase her photos. And she even adopted the moniker, The Kosraean Photographer.
“Hashtags were kind of new at the time and it’s an easier way to find me,” Janie said. She told people to search the #thekosraeanphotographer to find her work.
As the years went on, Janie’s creative gears continued to turn and she longed for another project to conquer. She thought of her childhood, her life in Kosrae. When she wasn’t farming or fishing or going to school, she was baking with her mom and then delivering pastries door-to-door, she said.
When she was young, baking was a chore. “I would cry,” Janie said.
So when Janie called her mom asking for her Kosraean banana pie recipe, her mom teased her, “Oh now you want the recipe?”
That was when Janie started to bake. She made her favorites growing up and then moved on to baking cakes. Then she got into decorating them.
“I fell in love with decorating cakes,” she said.
In a similar way to how her photography caught people’s attention on Facebook, Janie’s cakes impressed her fellow military wives who then commissioned cakes from her for their parties.
It all fell into place.
Before her father passed away, he asked her if she was still pursuing her hobbies and when she told him she was, he told her to chill.
“I was like, ‘You, you made me who I am today. I cannot just sit still,’” Janie said, laughing at the memory.
These days, Janie continues to bake and decorate cakes and take on photography gigs, while raising her four kids at home. Recently, her creative gears started to turn once more.
Inspired by her sister-in-law Joen Jesse, Janie tried her hand at making custom wood decor.
Now she’s working on a clothing line and hopes to launch her website soon.
Janie said she is trying her hand at different things and she wants to see where it will take her.
“Why not try to see where I’m going?” She said. “I’m blessed with it. The Lord provides me with these talents, why would I just put it up on the shelf and look at it and dream about it?”
For those who want to get started with photography or baking or another creative endeavor, Janie offers this advice: “Go for it.”
“Don’t be afraid. Especially, we’re from the islands, we’re stronger than we know,” she said. “We’re built strong. We go for it. You have to go for it.” ◉
Thank you Janie for your time. It was such a pleasure to speak with you and to get to know you.
I learned about Janie from her sister-in-law Joen Jesse, who I’ve written about for The Husk. Thank you, Joen!
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