Herald-Leader photographer: Why I love to capture the right moment for my community

My eyes have always been my primary mode of learning. Photography stepped into a larger role in my life in high school as I started to hike and discover the Pacific Northwest around Portland, Or. where I grew up. My mother let me borrow her camera to use while I hiked near Mount Hood, the Columbia River Gorge and the Oregon coast.

Picking up a camera allowed me to feel comfortable being curious about the world and people around me. It also gave me a desire to explore and seek out new experiences. The power of a camera to show the world around me in ways I had never seen before and open doors was magical and I was hooked.

I left home to attend college in a place I had visited only once, Kentucky.

Bowling Green and Western Kentucky University were my introduction to the place that would become a second home to me. At WKU I learned the fundamentals of camera systems for stills and video, but more importantly I was taught the fundamentals of storytelling. In college I found photojournalism helped me be involved and have an impact on my community.

For someone pursuing a career in journalism, one of the highest calling is “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” For me comforting often comes in the simple form of listening. Listening as someone recounts the love and impact their parents had on them while search and rescue teams search a riverbed after catastrophic regional flooding. Listening to an individual’s battle with generational addiction. Afflicting usually takes the form of readers being confronted with the uncomfortable truth of the circumstances some in our community must deal with. Circumstances of homelessness, natural disasters, victims of crime and abuse can make a reader acknowledge the realities of unfairness and inequality in the world and our community.

An opportunity to promote or increase understanding. The privilege of exploration and curiosity. The privilege of creating a visual history of our community at this time. These are the greatest gifts photojournalism gives me and why this career is so rewarding. Photojournalism gives me the opportunity to listen, to see, to record the highs and the lows of my community, it allows me to be present in the moment.