Photography
Photography Experience
I have had extensive experience with photography, both through my multimedia experience and through the Photography 1 course I took during second semester of my junior year.
In this course, I learned how to operate both film and digital cameras, how to prep and develop film, and how to incorporate various photography techniques and camera tricks into my work, in addition to further bolstering my command of Adobe Photoshop.
Photojournalism
In the wake of the shooting at the Fourth of July parade in the nearby suburb of Highland Park, my co-editor-in-chief took it upon herself to visit the memorial left in the city's downtown area in order to gather specific details and interview people on the street about experiences they may have had with the tragedy. As a part of this, she also hoped to use photos taken from these memorials to build an authentic story and design about gun violence's impact in the community. I was more than happy to tag along with her, capturing many different symbols of loss and hope throughout the area.
While it is typically our staff's policy that our staff photographers and cartoonists provide visuals for a given story, I have still used my photography experience to take photos for multiple smaller, less art-intensive online news stories, taking quick on-the-spot photos to encapsulate the main idea of the story while getting it to press as soon as possible.
In addition, I received the go-ahead from our executive visuals editor to work alongside her to plan and shoot the front-page art for my Issue #2 story, "College or Bust." Shooting this photo was far more difficult than anticipated and the concept went through many revisions, but it was rewarding to see my vision for the front-page art come to life nonetheless.
Original
Final Version
Caption Writing
While creating and brainstorming eye-catching and interesting art is important to draw readers into a story, this hook is meaningless without a strong caption that gives readers a taste of what the story will be about.
I find that this is typically best accomplished with a secondary sentence after a simple explanation of the photo or cartoon; this bit of extra information almost acts as another secondary headline that teases what's to come in the story, bridging the gap between the art and the story itself.
