Tear sheets edited during my internship for the Denver Post with guidance by Katie Rausch

After high school graduation I spent a month in Australia. Within the first few days of landing in Sydney I stumbled upon the 2017 World Press Photo Exhibit. I vividly remember the images I saw made by Daniel Berehulak for the New York Times piece “They Are Slaughtering Us Like Animals”. The images of death were captivating, intriguing and I wanted to know more. Later I found the long form piece displayed online. This is the first moment I was introduced to the idea of what photojournalism could be. In college while working as a photo editor for the college paper I pitched to our editorial staff how images could be displayed differently in long form, I showed them the example of how The New York Times had displayed Berehulak’s images, writing and data. As a team, we created this enterprise piece, The balancing act.

While working as a photo editor my sophomore year I curated online galleries, pulled files and shot assignments. Our photo staff was slim as a college paper without the funds to pay anyone but the editors of each department. I tried building our team and photo community following the ideas that Bob Lynn writes about in his book, Vision, Courage and Heart. During my senior year I assisted in research and data analyzation for my mentor Martin Smith-Rodden and Tara Lynn Pixley as they created The State of Photography 2022. Additionally I assisted with research after college for Professor Smith-Rodden and Marissa Wiley in Sustaining Vision: Competency Modeling to Understand Best Practices for Visual Editors. (see below)

While working at the college paper, interning at various papers around the country, working as a staff visual journalist in Dallas and now as a freelancer based in Denver, I have learned a lot about what good newsroom leadership looks like and what the qualities successful leaders hold. I am interested in visual editing to further advocate for photographers through elevating voices and uplifting good visual storytelling being done. There must be more empathetic leaders in this industry!

Below you can see some of the tearsheets my peer designers, Emily Wright , Elliot DeRose and I worked together to create during our early college years.

Editing with Emerging photographers

In 2021 freelancer Arvin Temkar covered the Atlanta Spa Shootings while on assignment for The Wall Street Journal. Together we talked about an edit for his portfolio and the best way to display his work. We decided that dyptichs showing the contrast between scenes, details and color worked the best in his portfolio.