How Being a “Pub Kid” Changed My Life

My junior year. Student photographer for the 2000 graduation ceremony at Junction City High School (Oregon).

**Warning… the photos in this post are a scanned images from the late 1990s… so please don’t judge image quality (or hair styles) too harshly! =)

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I feel like you all are going to learn a LOT about me while we’re all quarantined. lol Without new sessions and material to share, and I’m going back to my list of “oh I should I write about that someday!” blog post ideas. ;) One of which is how I got started in photography…

Short answer, my parents bought me a camera for my birthday in middle school and I fell in love. It was an Olympus OM-10 and I took it everywhere with me for the next 6 years… through high school and into my freshman year in college. But there is way more to the story than that.

I was NOT one of the “popular” kids in high school. I was in the pep band and took a bunch of art classes (photography mostly… duh, right? lol). I didn’t play any sports after the fall of my freshman year (I’m just not into competition), and was an honor student. I spent a lot of time in the dark room by myself, and I was the kid who felt unreasonably guilty going off campus for lunch once or twice a year (we had a closed campus), and felt like it was karma when I got a terrible sunburn when I skipped a class to sit outside in the sun on early June day of my junior year. Pretty much, I was the “good kid”, the “smart kid”… but also, “the kid with the camera”.

I joined Junction City High School’s*# newspaper team my freshman year as a writer and occasional photographer. I was a page editor and copy editor my sophomore and junior years. Senior year I was offered the chance to be the Editor of the high school yearbook.

**Yup… That Junction City High School… =)

(Images above were taken 1) on a pep band road trip, 2) for promotional materials for our Mr. Tiger competition, 3) on a field trip to the University of Oregon’s Multi-Cultural festival, 4) & 5) a National Honor Society trip to the Heceta Head Light House, and 6) at the Homecoming queen crowning at JCHS’s homecoming game).

Being part of the high school publications team was, honestly, a life changing experience. My friends became my team, and my team became my friends. We spent A LOT of time together over the years. Between class time, after school time (LOTS of hours spent after school and weekends in the publications room getting everything ready for print), and attending annual trainings and competitions across the country. I went on a trip via airplane for the first time ever with the high school publications group. We traveled together to Albuquerque, NM, Atlanta, GA, and San Francisco, CA over the years… and I caught the travel bug. If I’m not on a plane at least once a year now, I start to feel antsy.

I learned so much about writing and photography… lighting, composition, angles. Not to mention how to tell a story with images, and be able to adjust them later and where to place them on the page to provoke even more emotion. I learned how to “hide” in a crowd and get the best candid photos without getting in the way and interfering with the action.

(Being a “fly on the wall” is my absolute favorite thing to do with a camera, even to this day! I’m constantly say, “No! Don’t look at me!” lol)

I went to college with plans to major in journalism with an emphasis on photojournalism, but, after my first year, I realized that the demands of the profession were not the right fit for me. I switch majors and, years later, started my work in the social services. But one day, several years later, my brother asked me to take his engagement photos. I picked up my new, digital, point-and-shoot camera (yup… didn’t have anything fancy!), and realized that I’d been missing this part of myself. The rest is history.

Publications team on a hike in New Mexico, circa 1998 (I think)