Personal beats generic.
Every time.
One curious mind.
Many ways to make.
I’m Nate, a designer, AI engineer, photographer, and founder in San Jose. Different practices, one point of view.
Photography → Design → AIStill following the curiosity.
Always looking.Always learning.
OriginIt started as
It started as
a seed.
Photography went in the ground in summer 2020, in the middle of the pandemic. As the passion grew, it spread into design, two businesses, and AI.
The photographer’s eye became the designer’s eye. Running Nate Tran Photography and Stella Booth taught me what shipping actually costs. When AI arrived, it did not replace any of that. It gave every branch more reach.
I am self-taught across much of it. My loop is research, move, review, fix. A new tool is not a threat. It is another way to test an idea.
01 / PrinciplesThe bar behind
The bar behind
the work.
Taste is a skill, not a vibe.
Years of training my eye is the thing I trust most.
AI is a tool, not the author.
I make the calls. It does the reps.
Community over competition.
Uplifting people has never cost me a thing.
The experience is the product.
People remember how it felt, not only how it looked.
02 / Off the clockReferences come
References come
from living.
Hobbies that keep feeding the work.
Photography
Six years behind the camera. It trained the eye everything else runs on.
Film
Horror and Wong Kar Wai. Tension, light, pacing, and mood.
Reading
Psychology, philosophy, and culture. A little every day, on purpose.
Travel
New places, new references, and a reason to keep paying attention.
03 / ExperienceThe growth
The growth
arc.
Photography begins
The camera became the practice that trained everything else: light, timing, people, and judgment.
West Coast Creatives
Organized more than 10 community events and helped build a local network of over 1,000 Bay Area creatives.
B.A. Graphic Design
San Jose State University, Dean’s Scholar twice, plus the Google UX Design Professional Certificate.
Stella Booth
Built the brand, website, operations, and hosted experience for a Bay Area photo booth business.
529 Haus
Co-founded a Bay Area creative-entrepreneur club and run operations and media for monthly events.
Design + AI
Directing AI to prototype and ship real products while owning product judgment and quality.
04 / The stackThe kit behind
The kit behind
the work.
Loved using
Figma · Claude · React · Supabase · Vercel · Illustrator · Lightroom · DaVinci Resolve
Experience with
SwiftUI · Photoshop · Framer · Notion · Dubsado · Resend · ChatGPT · Pixieset · Premiere Pro · HTML / CSS / JS
How I work
Prompt engineering · AI-assisted design and build · Draft-and-approve loops · Workflow automation · Systems design · User research · Prototyping · Journey mapping · Information architecture · SEO
Experimenting with
Agentic workflows · Back-end security · MCP servers · Custom Claude skills · LLM councils · Creative coding and 3D · Short-form video
Next projectSelected work
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