Photojournalism
For three years, I was nothing more than an average, when-needed photographer. However, after the departure of all experienced photographers heading into my senior year, I learned to shoot everything from magazine portraits to events in a matter of weeks.
My Favorite Photos
Read the descriptions to find out why they're my favorites.
Former U.S. Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff speaks at a rally supporting former Vice President Kamala Harris's presidential campaign on Oct. 10. I like the depth of this photo, with Emhoff speaking in front of a back drop of college students representing the youthful support for his wife.
An Apalachee High School fan covers her eyes while watching the Wildcats play Clarke Central High School in football on Sept. 28. I love this photo because of the context - watching this particular fan all game, she was emotional throughout, symbolizing the emotion of the game.
The Kirkland quadruplets use kickboards to swim in a line during their Shamrock Swim Team practice. My favorite aspects of this photo was the use of light and leading lines to frame the diminutive subjects.
Former U.S. Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff speaks at a rally supporting former Vice President Kamala Harris's presidential campaign on Oct. 10. I like the depth of this photo, with Emhoff speaking in front of a back drop of college students representing the youthful support for his wife.
Galleries
When shooting galleries, my best asset is planning. I don’t have the technical skill required to pull off the perfect photo every time, but I make up for it with meticulous planning and observation. If I can get into the right position to take the photo over and over again, then I’ll capture the most important moments of any event I attend.
Team Trump visits Athens
Somehow, I was the only member of the media to attend a campaign event for President-Elect Donald Trump in Athens, which presented me with a unique opportunity. As the only photographer, I had free reign to go where I wanted and talk to who I wanted to, including a former White House Press Secretary and U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst. Early on, I made sure to meet with the operations director for the event, and establishing this relationship enabled me access to the speakers and the event at large. With the photos, I tried to contextualize the mood – defiant – and the crowds – small, but passionate – at the event.
Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff campaigns in Athens
Conversely, the Kamala Harris campaign event I attended a week later was just the opposite. Because former Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff was speaking, the Secret Service had cordoned off some areas of the event space, while there was a designated media press pit that was full to the brim. Arriving two hours before anyone began speaking, I repeated my process for the Trump event, focusing on the hopeful, yet tense mood and large crowd size. However, due to the nature of the event, I had much less freedom to move around, meaning most of my shots were medium or wide, rather than the tight action shots I was able to shoot at the Trump event.
Athens Rock Lobsters make home debut
On a list of sports I thought I might shoot in high school, hockey would have been just about bottom of the list. However, on opening night for the Athens new semi-pro hockey team in a 8,500-seat arena, I was one of only four photographers on the ice for the puck drops, featuring Athens Mayor Kelly Girtz and iconic rock band The B-52’s. For me, the true story of the game was not what happened during the match, but the local community coming in to support the team. As such, I focused on wide and tight crowd shots to contextualize the occasion, while arriving three hours before puck drop to shoot all of the pregame festivities.
Apalachee FB returns
This was a football game that couldn’t be less about football. The game was Apalachee’s first since their defensive coordinator died in the tragic shooting at their high school, meaning emotions were high on and off the field. I changed a couple of things about my approach because of this context. I usually shoot from the Clarke Central sideline, but I spent the entirety of the game from the Apalachee sideline to better shoot their community and fans. Furthermore, I always kept one eye on the team and fans, looking for emotion, particularly during tense moments in the game like the moment of silence and the postgame prayer the team engaged in.
The Classic City Championship
Taking place early in the year, almost the entirety of this game was played in harsh, bright daylight, which I initially struggled to control. However, as the game wore on, I fixed my shutter speed and was able to capture a couple of exceptional shots, including one of our star running back leaving a rival defender in his wake, symptomatic of the team’s dominant victory.
Covering the Fall Pep Rally
This gallery produced some of our most viral photos of the year. When I was shooting, I categorized shots into two categories – individual/small group, and class-wide shots. I knew that the photos would be posted on social media, so instead of focusing on the actual events of the rally, I focused on crowd reactions, which produced more compelling photos.
A day at the races
This gallery was all about meticulous planning. I woke up at 7:00 for the start of the race, parking downtown to shoot the start of the event, before racing around town to three other race checkpoints to shoot the race leaders from my local high school. Knowing the race routes and open streets was crucial, as I was reporting on a couple of Clarke Central runners in particular, so making sure I was in the right place when they went by was important. Once I was in the right position, the actual shots weren’t too difficult, with the most important things I was looking for movement and exertion.
Hip-Hop Canvas: Beats, Art & Fashion
In February of 2025, I covered a Black History Month event held at a local movie theater and event space. The problem: the lighting in the venue was almost non-existent, limiting my range of expressive shots and my ability to capture the exuberant emotions of the performers. Nonetheless, I adapted to these conditions, favoring stable subjects and working to capture photos up close in lieu of context shots.
CCHS plays in JV Region Championship
This was only the second gallery I ever shot, and duly, I struggled with some of the technical aspects of using the camera – I never turned on continuous shooting because I didn’t know how to. As such, my best photos were reaction shots of players and coaches, but I was still proud of the moments I captured under bright, harsh lighting.
Feature Photography
With feature photography, I think about the story first. For posed portraits, I try to balance authenticity with the message the story demands, With non-posed feature photos, I still look for moments of harmony between what I read in the story and what I see in their actions.
Describe your image
Describe your image
After Apalachee portraits
The main shoot for this story at Apalachee High School aimed to contextualize setting just as much as character. The person in the photos, Apalachee High School sophomore Traveler Whaley, posed for me in several locations in front of the school, but ultimately, my favorite photos were the wide angles where the calm scene of the school could be juxtaposed with the narrative of the school shooting within its walls. For the supplementary photographs, I made sure to take them all immediately after my interviews – that way, their temperament in the photographs most clearly mirrored how they felt speaking in the story.
Describe your image
Describe your image
The Weight of the Scale portraits
Having worked on the story as a writer, I knew what I wanted to communicate in photographs. Every one I took aimed to showcase the person themselves – though the shots were all posed, the way they posed was interesting to me. For a story about beauty standards, exploring how unmasked my stakeholders would be on camera drove the visual appeal of the story. As such, the straight-on, headfirst style of the portraits reinforced the unapologetic sentiment uttered by the stakeholders.
Describe your image
Chuck Kinnebrew portraits
My photos of Chuck Kinnebrew, a former University of Georgia football player who integrated the team in the 1970s, attempted to convey his relationship with the university. We took the photos at two locations – first, the monument erected in his honor outside Sanford Stadium, and then overlooking Sanford Stadium itself. The first location was meant to visually establish Kinnebrew’s importance to UGA, while the photos inside the stadium – in which Kinnebrew is looking up, as if to the future – were meant to convey his bold feelings about UGA’s treatment of Black athletes and Black athletes’ responsibilities going forward.
Malachi McNeill portraits
I have only interacted with the police once in my life -- I got asked to leave this bridge after taking photos of Malachi McNeill, a former football player who'd almost committed suicide on that bridge a year earlier. Encounter aside, these photos -- although too dark in their natural form -- represent some of my favorite, evocative photographs. They cover much of what I think photos should do, as they visually tell the story on the page, convey aesthetic beauty and emotion, and connect directly to the viewer.
Clarice Buril portrait
These photos were of Clarice Buril, a student quoted in a story about safety at CCHS athletic events. I made sure to read her quotes prior to the story and make the photos complement the emotion she expressed there. Ideally, I would’ve liked to take photos of her at a sporting event, but given the timeline, we instead shot them inside an empty stadium. I used the leading lines of the stadium stands to frame Buril while she looked onto the field.
Caption Writing
Of course, there's more to photography than just the pixels themselves. All photos we publish require an ODYSSEY-style caption with a quote that contextualizes the image, and as such, I've written countless captions across all platforms.
Left: Varsity football defensive coordinator Joshua Dawson coaches the linebackers in their 14-28 loss to North Oconee High School on Aug. 5, 2022. Dawson began coaching with the Gladiators before the 2021 season, bringing his relentless attitude from his playing days to his coaching. “I always try to find some competition. I’m competing against (the other team’s) offensive coordinator, so I’m always thinking, ‘Are they outworking me? Do I need to watch more film?’” Dawson said. “I just try to use that same mindset, that same ambition that I had as a player to keep me motivated.” Photo by Aza Khan
I chose to pair this quote with this photo in my 300-word story on Dawson as I felt it contextualized his passion for coaching because he couldn't play any more -- the focus of the piece.
Left: An Oconee County High School girls varsity basketball player competes for a rebound with multiple Clarke Central High School players during the Warriors 33-23 win over the Gladiators on Nov. 15. According to CCHS head girls varsity basketball coach Carla Johnson, the Gladiators’ lack of stamina on defense let them down towards the end of the game. “(On) defense, you can always play hard. (When) they outscored us in that third quarter, we had a letdown on defense,” Johnson said. “We stopped doing our rotations like we were supposed to, (weren’t) picking up slack and (weren’t) boxing out. They got two (or) three opportunities per possession and that hurts.” Photo by Lucas Donnelly
The choice of quote was very intentional. As Johnson spoke about her team's failure to box OCHS out, I paired her quote with a photo of what she described.
Left: Associate Principal Dr. Cindi Lowe speaks at an ODYSSEY Media Group Press Conference in Room 231 on Nov. 7, 2022. After a year and a half as CCHS Associate Principal, Cindi made the difficult decision to put an end to her 30-plus year career in education by retiring at the end of the 2023-24 fall semester. “(Retiring) is gonna be wonderful, it’s gonna be great. I can’t wait and it is going to be wonderful and all those things are true, but the ability to make the decision that this is going to be the end of my career in education has been much more difficult than I thought it would be,” Cindi said. Photo by Aza Khan
Because Lowe's retirement was so sudden, we didn't have any spellbinding visuals available, so I had to make the reader care about the photo with the caption. This meant I included a more poignant quote than I might have otherwise chosen.
Left: Math department teacher Eric Smith (right) works with junior Harper Webb (left) in the Clarke Central High School courtyard on Oct. 6. After the Georgia Department of Education changed the math curriculum across the state, Smith has had to adapt to the new standards. “As a teacher, it puts a little bit more on our plate as far as preparation because, as teachers, especially if you’re teaching similar courses year after year, you get into routine and you kind of know what you’re doing. Now, you’re having to go back and maybe rethink some things,” Smith said. “Looking at the flow of the new standards, I think it has been pretty well thought out as far as the progression from one course to the next.” Photo by Wyatt Meyer
This was a particularly hard story to shoot, as no visual could show the changed standards themselves. Thus, the caption acted as a bridge from the photo to the story.
Photography Growth
Unlike some other things with journalism, photography didn't come naturally to me, meaning I've invested a lot of time to improve my photography skills in and outside the classroom,
In-class presentations
The ODYSSEY devotes a significant amount of time towards training all members of staff in photography, not just dedicated photographers. As such, I've had many opportunities to learn about the ins and outs of photography -- from how to operate a DSLR to photo composition basics -- delivered by award-winning photographers the ODYSSEY has on staff. These presentations meant that before I even picked up my first camera, I knew what to look for in a photo -- even on just my phone.
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Above: The photos display in-class notes I've taken on photography, social media spotlights known as scenes, and photography assignments I've done for the ODYSSSEY.
Journalism Conferences
Outside of the classroom, I have actively sought to expand on my photography knowledge. At both the Fall 2023 National High School Journalism Convention in Boston and 2024 NHSJC in Philadelphia, I attended a pre-conference photography workshop that immersed me in not just how to shoot individual photos, but how to know what to shoot and what equipment to shoot it with. Even before that, I attended multiple sports photography sessions, a genre which I frequently explore.
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