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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.

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.

CCHS girls varsity basketball takes on Union Grove

Continuing to have limited experience with sports photography, I worked to build on the comparative failure in my first ever gallery – the grainy, yellow photos I took at varsity basketball Senior Night in February 2023. Less than a year later, I worked to rectify my biggest mistakes with that gallery, which was an incorrect white balance setting and a poor understanding of shutter speed and ISO’s relationship. With this gallery, I made sure to check my white balance settings and control my lighting, resulting in more publishable photographs.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Terry Liggin portraits

I went into these photos with one intention – to capture Assistant Principal Terry Liggin’s interactions with students. That was a central plot point in the story about him, but we had comparatively few photos of him actually working with students in our archives. As such, I just followed him around for around a half-hour, watching him speak to students in the halls, in classrooms, and in his office. Because the environment kept changing, it was hard to find the perfect portrait of Liggin the man, but in my eyes, the authenticity of the encounters redeemed what they lacked in ambiance.

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.

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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Above: The left and bottom photos show my notes from the National High School Journalism Convention's Photography Pre-Con, while the top right photo shows my notes on sports photography from the Georgia Scholastic Press Association.

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