Chapter two of my internship was a whirlwind of new cities, sports, experiences and lots of growth.
Chapter two begins with ten days in Vegas covering Mountain West Basketball Championships. Such great reps covering basketball and my first time using remotes in basketball. Also got to drive around on a race track!
Then, back in Denver for a few days covering more DU hockey (See ya later at the national championship!)
I began the NCAA championship season in Philadelphia at NCAADI Wrestling Championships. I got to work with an amazing team covering three days of wrestling for the first time. It was some of the most fun I have had on assignment. It was so visual in a grueling way but also carried bits of visual humor for me as I found myself saying things like “Wow, how is his foot and his face there at the same time?” Donald Trump also made an appearance.
During three days back in Denver, I got to cover two Nuggets games for Getty. It was a great experience to photograph the NBA for the first time!
From there I went to Atlanta where I covered the South region’s Sweet 16 and Elite 8 of the men’s March Madness tournament. It was wonderful to cover such high intensity games that carried such emotion for the athletes and fans. In Atlanta I conquered my fear of heights and climbed a very tall ladder to set up my first shot clock remote camera, which I was quite excited to try. I then went to San Antonio where I helped cover the Final Four week with an incredibly talented team. Photographing basketball in a football stadium was really special. The space added such depth of field and the energy was super high.
The month finished out with a trip to St Louis for the Frozen Four - NCAADI Hockey Championships. I got to contribute multimedia and fan experience content for the NCAA which was great added experience and was such fun to make feature photos at an event with such pride for the sport. Following the championship I spent some time on the ice photographing winning and loosing emotion. I also found my second favorite coffee shop!
Time to rest up, grocery shop for the first time in over a month and charge some batteries before heading to Vegas to start chapter three. Stay tuned!
Bits and pieces of the first month of my internship with Clarkson Creative/NCAA Photos!
This last month was my first time ever photographing gymnastics. During hockey I was excited to set up a strobe in the cat walk to use with a remote camera also in the catwalk. My goal was to add a little more dimension to that angle with shadows. I am excited to try it more in the future! I got lucky during my first men’s lacrosse game in Denver with a snow globe game. When the game started it was blue sky and dry. By the end I was sitting in a few inches of snow. I also got to photograph Denver University women’s lacrosse’s biggest home upset ever. The unranked Pioneers beat No. 5 Michigan 13-11. My month was rounded out by a quick trip to Albuquerque to photograph Mountain West Conference Indoor Track and Field Championships. I felt in my wheelhouse photographing track, but was challenged by messy backgrounds and low, inconsistent light.
In just a few days I will be off to Las Vegas for Mountain West Conference Basketball Championships. The rest of March will be a wonderful whirlwind of assignments all across the country. Stay tuned!
Welcome to my blog! I’m excited to tell you what professionally excites and inspires me, the stories I’ve worked on recently and the personal whereabouts of my life. If you just want the quick rundown though, here it is. I am starting my full time freelance career based in Oregon and the greater Pacific Northwest. I am available for hire on general assignments and have a special interest in environment, climate and action. Be sure to check out my website and keep a look out for future chapters of my blog.
Recent Work
Culminating my time at the University of Oregon I had the privilege of working under the guidance of Torsten Kjellstrand and Dennis Dimick on a project called Science Story. For it, I produced a photo story about a community of citizen scientists in Oregon and their quest to collect - and kill - wild bees in the name of science. Quite simply, the story was a joy to work on. I could have only dreamed of the opportunity to tromp around the Oregon wilderness with bee enthusiasts. I surely never thought I would find myself eye to eye with tiny purple bees contemplating lighting setups for insect portraiture. I’m proud of how visual the photos are. I thought a lot about scale. A bee’s world, so small it must be photographed with a niche super macro lens. A human’s so large, it stretches beyond the grassy horizons into labs filled to the ceiling with data and technology. I found beauty in the space where those two worlds collide and the passion and narrative in that space where bees and humans come together. The story was a culmination of my environmental studies and science communication specializations. It felt fulfilling to spend time intentionally thinking about how to engage with the general audience about information that was so scientific at its core.
I also worked on a personal essay about my grandparents’ cabin in northern Wisconsin, a place generations of my family have retreated to for years. It felt special to turn my camera in on something so close. One of my first photo assignments in school was to document a sense of place. Photographing the cabin was an examination of place. There is a wood sign in front of the driveway that says “North of the Tension Zone.” To me, the cabin has always felt this way. It’s a quiet place. The sort of space where all you hear are loons and the soft rustle of wind in the trees. Even the sun feels like it’s in a perpetual state of quietness. Everything it touches, it does so softly and with care - something I’ve become especially keen about, since nerding out about light has become a profession for me. The only moments that are loud are laughter. In documenting this special place, I thought a lot about these themes of volume in my photos and tried to convey the special energy that I have felt there since I was a kid.
Workshops
Following my graduation I had the opportunity to attend Missouri Photo Workshop. I have always gravitated towards documentary photojournalism. Not only because of the rich storytelling quality, but because of the sentiment behind relationship development and spending adequate time with stories.
In Sedalia, Missouri I had the privilege to spend my week with Ashely Brandenburg and her amazing family documenting their lives and her process of redefining motherhood for herself and her children. I felt honored to learn and grow under the direct mentorship of MaryAnne Golon and Mallory Benedict and be surrounded by such rich talent and inspiration of my peers.
In undeniable, joyous exhaustion I drove from Sedalia to the Eddie Adams farm in New York. At the Eddie Adams Workshop I was honored to be surrounded by so much talent from so many different areas of photography expertise. The opportunity to receive mentorship from Al Bello, Alexis Cuarezma, Elizabeth Conley and Toni Sandys on the blue team was such an incredible learning experience. With their guidance, my team and I worked together to cover a high school football game. To attend lectures and receive portfolio reviews from some of the most accomplished and hardworking photographers and editors in the industry was wildly inspiring and impactful.
Personal Life
On October 10th I left my camera bag in New York and took a flight to Portugal. For the next two months, a close friend and I backpacked around Europe. In summation, Switzerland blew my mind. For days I hiked with a perpetual view, holding my breath on steep ridge lines, talking to cows while hiking through their green pastures and running miles to catch the day’s last train after losing track of time above alpine lakes. And I fantasize about moving to Berlin some day. I decided this, sitting in a small dingy wine bar filled with other folks in their 20’s as the bartender began to sing opera above the lulling chatter of German. Every day I traveled, I found such delight in being reminded of the joys of being an unassigned photojournalist. Every photo I made was simply because I was enamored by what I saw. But I also found a lot of solace in just living and learning and interacting with the world as a human and not a photojournalist at all. It feels important to me to tap out of that sometimes.
I grew excited about the sounds around me as much as what I was seeing. Languages that were new to my ears. Bells that clanked around the necks of cows. Automated train station voices. It all intrigued me. I began making small multimedia audio photographs. I’ve been calling them loud photos. Experimenting with the dimensionality of the audio medium and the ways that it can influence the communication of an image has helped me grow as a communicator. I am excited about continuing to tune my ear to the world in addition to my eye.
What Now?
This whole year, I’ve been asking myself this question. It’s weird because it is simultaneously wildly liberating and terrifying all at the same time. Seems to be a pretty normal question for post-graduates to be asking though.
For now, I am overjoyed to say that I have an answer.
I am available for hire as a freelancer based in Oregon and the greater Pacific Northwest. I am eager for general editorial assignments and have a special interest and added experience with environment and climate stories and action. I am scuba certified and within weeks of receiving my drone certification. I am excited to see where this next chapter takes me and can’t wait to share.
