For most of high school, my experience in photojournalism was limited to the occasional photo I took when reporting at events. I dabbled in digital photography while out of state at NSPA conventions, but never worked to tell a story with my photos until this year.
With the Annunciation shooting in Minneapolis, I found myself at the center of change that was best told through visual means. I photographed community events against gun violence and learned how to take moving photos on the fly to produce these photo galleries.
I followed students' chants for change as I circled around the high school about a week after the Annunciation shooting. I wanted to capture images that made viewers feel like they were in the crowd and part of the scene, so I spent a lot of time stepping into the crowd and clicking as fast as I could before students kept walking. The most stressful part of this process was the publishing immediately after. I wanted to document this before any other publication could and rushed to edit and post the photo gallery to Instagram. I had to repost three or four times because my internet kept failing and then the photos would not load on my computer. When the post finally went up, it became one of our most popular posts until recent months.
It is definitely an interesting decision to host a town hall addressing gun violence in light of a church shooting inside of a church. In between scribbling down timestamps and stopping people on their way out, I tiptoed around with my camera to try and capture the emotions of attendees and the hope that filled the air. I noticed that many attendees wore attire expressing their political opinions and tried to show them in the foreground of my photos. This photo gallery went up on Instagram a few hours after the town hall ended.
At the Medill-Northwestern Journalism Institute, I spent a lot of time learning how to use a camera. I took my borrowed camera on boat rides and field trips and down to the Great Room every night to test my skills. My main focus with these photos is to depict the experiences 90 high school students passionate about journalism get up to when left to their own devices.
Cameras are expensive and my publication only has so many for staff to use. This year, I have encouraged more staff to take their own photos using their phones, even if the quality is not the greatest or they are not as confident in their framing. Ultimately, we can only be grateful that we can carry such great cameras in our pockets. I have taught staff to turn on the grid setting, use portrait mode when taking photos of subjects, and how to edit their photos to turn off HDR.