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Photojournalism
My approach to photography
Pictures tell stories that articles can’t. From facial expressions to painting a picture, photography is meant to tell more of the story. The first time I picked up a camera, I loved it even if the first five photos were way too bright.
In my Introduction to Journalism class, we’d always run out of cameras. So, often I’d let another classmate use it while I sat back. This changed in Wingspan. Since Wingspan tends to have few photographers, I decided to pick up photography.
A good photographer must get in close to get the perfect shot. I could not do this at the start. I didn’t want to get in someone’s way or ruin an emotional moment. But with years of experience, I’ve created strategies.
One, if I’m covering an event then I scout out the location. I find spots that will have the most action and ways to get to each one. This helps me get clear, up-close shots without being a distraction.
Two, I ask experts. If there’s someone in the room who knows a lot about whatever I’m covering, I ask questions about what they think would be the best shot. For example, when I covered a Thanksgiving parade, I talked to an insider about the order of groups that would be in the parade.
Three, I suck it up and get in the action. If there appears to be a good photo calling my name, I get the photo. In my experience, most people are OK with getting their photo taken. I just have to check with them. If they tell me no, it’s better that I tried than not, especially when some of my best photos come from spur-of-the-moment shots.
News Photography
Thankfulness Parade
My favorite event for photos are parades. The struggle for this parade was the cold temperatures and wind. My hands were cold and my hair kept flying in my face. However, the weather conditions led to one of my strangest photos. At the end of the parade was a Santa Claus in a truck with a few teachers and a sign that said, “We love our students.” But the car ahead had inflated balloon letters. One of those letters broke off and was flying above Santa. Even though Santa was in front of the students, they were focused on the floating E, just like I was while taking the photo.
Apex
For two weeks I just kept going to Nixa's new sports facility, the Apex. I was covering the new building for Wingspan and there were multiple events taking place every day. So, I kept going back to get more photos. The best visit was during a band practice when I went up on a tall platform in the middle of the building to look over the whole band. I felt ginormous. While the focus of the article was the Apex, I also knew I needed to convey what I was seeing from that platform, a building helping loads of students.
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The photo on the top left was used for The Wingspan's fall 2025 cover and the photo on the bottom right was used in the magazine.
Feature Photography
Seussical The Musical
This was my first time working with a long lens. Normally Yearbook has the long lenses checked out, but Seussical The Musical’s dress rehearsal was on a Wednesday, I snagged one. You might have noticed that most of these photos are vertical. I was trying to get a cover shot for our Winter issue. I found the long lens confusing at first — spending the first 10 minutes messing with the camera's settings — but I pulled it together and got a few stunning pictures, including one of my favorite covers.
The photo in the middle second row was the Wingspan's winter 2025 cover and the top photo on the left was used in the magazine.
Student Action
Action comes in all forms. In these photos, the focus is always students. The students can be studying, talking, playing music, but the one thing in common is mundane action. What I like about student action is getting to know the people in the photos. How do they interact with others? What are they thinking? What are they doing? Taking these photos feels like “being a fly on the wall,” but in the most literal sense. While the subjects of my photos know I’m there, they’re focused on whatever they’re doing.
Editorial
I joined Wingspan at the best time because we had just got an additional studio that included an anchoring set-up and a photography studio. While I’ll admit I sucked at lighting the studio when we started, I now love taking studio and staged photos. Recently, my team and I put together a photoshoot for an article about performative males, a trend on social media about an archetype of young men who adopt a progressive aesthetic to appear appealing to women. Our team brought in stereotypical performative male items such as records, books and matcha. As Wingspan’s junior design posed the two students and I took the photo. It turned out stunning and it is going to be our next issue’s cover since most high schoolers will recognize the reference.
