About Me

Hi, I'm Belen Rivera, and I'm a junior content team editor on the Muse News Magazine at Dreyfoos School of the Arts!

Reach me at:

I have always felt inclined to tell stories, whether it be mine or someone else's.

I have always been an observer, but it has always been something I never knew how to hone, or rather, something I never thought about. As a young girl, there was nothing I wanted more than to be a dancer. Then, a musician. And after that, an actor or a painter. Needless to say, it had never occurred to me that rather than being someone in the ballets I used to watch or the person making songs like the ones I liked, I could be the person to showcase these artists' talents through my lens or words.

I only started to realize that I could observe people and tell their stories through my eyes in 8th grade. However, by the time I had this revelation, I was already stuck in the inescapable jaws of eighth grade, and at the confusing age of 13, like almost every teenager, I was held back by the notion that I couldn't act on any of my dreams or ideas.

Coming into Dreyfoos High School of The Arts as a communications major expanded my horizons to another level, diminishing my fears of trying new things, because to me, nothing was scarier than the change from middle to high school. As I began re-exploring the different aspects of communications with my new ideas, I realized there was one option I had never explored, and that was, of course, photography.

Although photography was not offered for communications majors, I was able to rediscover the camera that sat in the back of my closet, collecting dust with my tap shoes and purple violin. I went into my sophomore year with an SD card half-filled with pictures of my sister and me in a tutu and almost no experience in photography, convinced that, now that I had gotten the hang of high school, I could finally be able to tell stories the way I've always wanted to.

I was never aware that being a photojournalist for my school news magazine could open up so many unexpected doors. Knowing that so many people can see the stories I tell through my pictures has excited (and intimidated) me to an unfathomable level. I am looking forward to being able to tell more stories and having other people see them and get as excited about reading/seeing them as I was telling them.

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