Kama Markel And His Photo Uprising!

By: Kellum Dixon

Date: Spring 2025

Kama is really good at taking photos, in fact he is the lead photo editor in my digital media class! How does he do it? How did he get there? What is his job like?  These are all questions that I am going to be answering in this article about photography and my friend/classmate Kama. If you want to learn more about photo taking and what his job is like, this is the article for you.

Kama and I became friends through playing hockey for the Jr. Generals this year. We also became better friends because he and I go to the same school and have our Digital Media elective class together. In Digital Media, I am a writer and Kama is the photo editor. When I was done with my last article (it’s all about water parks-go check it out!) I wondered “What could I write about today!?!” Then it hit me, I could write about Kama and how he became a good photographer, how he does his job and also learn about some of the conditions of his job and even how to become a better photographer myself.

“So how does it feel to be a photo editor?” I asked Kama, to which he responded,  “It feels great to be the photo editor and obviously I get a take photos and I also get to help you know? People learn how to take photos and like what perspectives and just how to take all the different types of photos that are out there.”   

From there I asked him, “So how exactly did you get to where you are in photo editing? Were you a photographer and you had to like work hard to get to where you are now?”  When I asked this, I wanted to know what work Kama did or even how he started taking photos. Kama gave me a great answer basically saying how he started as a photographer. “My photography journey kind of started when I was a kid, like my sister you know played soccer and my parents would often take a camera to her games and I just started asking if I can take the photos. Then I just started taking photos of my sister using that camera. It felt like I was someone who was cool and then just as soon as I got in this class I knew that a photography job was exactly what I wanted to do.” 

“That's really cool. So, you said that you took the pictures at your sister's games because you wanted to. How long did you do that?” I asked.  Then Kama said  “When I was probably like 3 years[old] I did that, I'm currently 14 years old and I think it was around maybe when I was six or seven when I started taking [other] photos.”  “So you've been taking photos for 7 years?” I asked, “Wow! That's really great. Do you have any tips for taking photos?”  Kama replied with: “Don't rush it, you need to know what you want to take a photo of before you actually snap the photo.”

“Also just take pictures of things you like, like sports and you can take pictures like for a  yearbook. We do the yearbook often and you can just take pictures of all types of stuff. I prefer to take sports photos or photos of just stuff by itself, maybe some perspective photos.”  After that, I followed up with another question.“Is there any specific way to edit the photos that you would suggest?”  “Personally I don't like using any photo editing apps. I've just taken the photo and left it at that if it's a bad photo I probably just delete it…” Kama said.

“Would you like me to tell us a little bit about yourself before we end the interview very shortly.” I asked Kama and he said,  “Just a little bit yeah…I was born in Portland Oregon. I've lived in Eugene since 2015. I love to play sports like hockey and lacrosse. That is pretty much all you need to know.” 

“If you had to say one thing to young photographers out there, what would that be?”  I said before I concluded the interview. “I don't really have anything to say but if you like photography stay with it, because it might be hard at first but you may start to really like it.”  

By the end of the interview I had learned so much about photography that I hadn't known before. I learned more about Kama than I knew before. I also learned that it takes practice taking photos, and not to give up when it gets hard. With Kama’s new information will you start taking photos?  Do you know more about taking photos than before reading this article?  If you do that's great. Thank you for reading!