Aren’t we all? This is a pretty good title of our project. (I did not come up with it). The theme of this project was that we were witnessing the history of COVID-19. It’s a pretty bad scenario right now, but we can always make the best of it! The way we are trying to do that right now is through photo essays. The driving question of this project was:

How can we, as photojournalists, tell stories of our community during
this period of physical distancing?

And honestly, I think it’s a really good driving question. It really makes you think about multiple things. What do photojournalists do? What is our community? How will I show physical distancing? And these are all the questions I asked in my head upon hearing the driving question. But I have to say, I’m proud of how far I’ve come. And so here is my answer to the driving question. I think it’s pretty hard to answer it with just a few sentences but I’ll try my best. Plus, I also have the photo essay to show my answer. Well, here goes!

I think the best way to share stories is with emotions. I think the more you make people “feel,” the more likely they’ll be to think about your story. Even if they’re unhappy emotions, they can still provoke you to listen and even take action. The community I chose was my friends. I think it’s pretty hard to stay in contact with people when you don’t see them anymore, but we try! We have regular FaceTimes, but more on that in my essay! There’s my written answer, but would you like to see the visual one? I’ll admit, there’s still a lot of writing…

Well, this is good and all, but how did I get here? I didn’t know squat about taking photos! If you want some good tips, check out this website here that I thought really helped me. It covers most of the basics we covered in class.

The first Milestone was definitely my favorite! It was all about just taking photos. To do this we had to take 2 different types. A Themed Photo Walk (taking photos of things with the same theme) and some Self Portraits. Here’s my Themed Photo Walk and Self Portraits:

Try and guess the theme for my walk?

Anyhoo, this Milestone really helped me. It just gave me that time to experiment, and try out different angles for shots. I’m really proud of the “green” one with the leaves and the wall with a crack as the background. If you thought it looked familiar, it’s the title page for my essay! This Milestone was a fun way for me to “gain my footing” as a photo journalist.

The next thing that helped me was the second Milestone. It was about getting to know your community. I definitely really liked this one, as I interviewed my friend Allie. She was very helpful and told me things that she also was finding difficult during this time. I asked her a list of questions for my interview, and I’m happy with how they turned out. Here are some of my favorite questions I asked: 

1. If you could name one emotion that sort of “dominates” your day, what would it be?
2. Are you finding ways to do things like sports at home?
3. Are there any places you miss going to?

These aren’t all, but they show the basics of my questions. Doing this Milestone really got me thinking about what community I would show. Unfortunately, I still didn’t really understand “community”. I still couldn’t show what community I was talking about.

And onto Milestone 5, the Milestone that really helped me. This one was all about planning the way we would take our shots, and what they would be of. It was doing this that I finally realized what my community would be. Me and my friends, the people who I spend the most time with (apart from my parents). I’m really proud of how my story board turned out. It made taking all the photos really easy; all the planning had been done!

And here it is! I like picking different angles to convey the feelings of my different shots!

And now we’re at the end of the Milestone journey! Only one thing left… how I made the book!

It was pretty fun, I’ll grant you.

1. After planning out the shots, I took a lot of photos
2. Then I looked through the photos to find the best ones
3. I went to retake one of the photos because the angle was off
4. I edited the photos and made them more “vibrant”
5. I placed the photos into my book
6. I wrote teensie-tiny little blurbs about each photo, in a weird order
7. I got feedback on my essay
8. I changed the order and made it more legible
9. I also wrote WAY more
10. And here we are! Published to my blog!

– Kate