1.Design
In design, I learned to previsualize my photo and to tell the story in a single photo. I had to transition from capturing only the peak action to trying to find a photo that defines an emotion during the game. Before I would even take the photo, I would figure out how the photo would reflect the story. Once I had an idea of what I wanted to the photo to look like, I would then go to a game and figure out how to get the photo. Even for portraits, I still spent time previsualing the finished product and then working backwards to find out how I would take the photo and the lighting that I would use.
5. Leadership and Team Building
For leadership, I have been coordinating closely with my groups for each issue to make sure that everyone is on the same page when writing our story. I have also been working with the juniors, ensuring they know what exactly their role is and how they should interview people. I’ll check their interview questions to make sure they can cover the story and let the athlete give their complete perspective on the story. I am also helping aspiring photographers in the class by having them follow me at sporting events so I can give them tips throughout the game. This is something I also want to do more of as I enjoy teaching my skills to other photographers.
7. News gathering
I have been working on gathering information from sources that know the most about the topic. I have needed to send messages to people beyond the school such as to doctors at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation and to VICIS representatives who made the helmets that the football team wore this year. I learned how to reach out to adults, explain what I need, and create a organized timeline. This will be valuable in the future both inside and outside of journalism. Some samples of this were in Issue 1 when I wrote about the new VICIS helmets in an opinion piece titled Finding Equity and Issue 2 when my group and I explored burnout in a feature titled All Burnt Out and I had to interview sports medicine doctors. I also learned to thank my sources, explain the final article, and follow up with samples.
9. Photojournalism
My biggest area of growth in photojournalism was developing portrait skills. This year I was mainly a sports photographer but this year I challenged myself to expand to portraits often in a photojournalism setting while continuing to tell a story with my photos. By doing so, I needed to coordinate more with the editors of Viking as well as staff writers. I had to accommodate each group’s requests for portraits and then try to take the best photo possible while ensuring everyone was happy with the result. My best portrait works have been this year; I took two portraits for two covers that needed to tell a story. I also took as well as portraits of all staff members where we used them on the website. I also used these opportunities to challenge myself to come up with a different style between the photos which I achieved by using different lighting, a change of backgrounds, and smoke.
11. Writing
This year, I wrote an opinion piece about the new football VICIS helmets, a feature on burnout in high school athletes and athletes in general, and a preview for all five of the winter sports teams at Paly. With little experience in journalism writing, I quickly learned how to write a interesting article about sports. One improvement I made was learning to write in a way that informs the reader and leads them through my points. This was due to my increase in organization that I learned from the more experienced writers. They taught me how to format my notes and quotes in a way that I could easily tie together facts, quotes, and information into paragraphs. My pieces of work for writing are my stories in each of the three print Issue of Viking, with Finding Equity in Issue 1, All Burnt Out in Issue 2, and Winter Sports Preview in Issue 3.