Football is probably in my top three favorite things to photograph. Getting to be so close to the action you can actually smell how bad all the footballs smell is. Seeing the coaches reaction to a bad call, all the encouragement from teammates, and players and coaches talking about strategy. You can hear the crowd roaring down from the stands. Football is such a fun environment to photograph in because there is always something happening, and the amount of angles you can cover it from are endless.

Volleyball also has to be one of my favorites to photograph, I think mainly because I played when I was younger and can understand the game. I loved going to State my sophomore and junior years to take pictures of the team.

Cheer is an interesting sport to photograph because stunting is such a hard thing to get. Half the time the bases look awkward while tossing a girl into the air and the flyer is sometimes at a difficult angle to get a picture.

Gymnastics definitely has to be one of the more challenging sports to photograph. They are moving so fast, you don’t always know where to put the focus because you don’t know if they are going to be upside down or right side up.

Basketball is such a fun sport to photograph, especially boys basketball. It’s such a fast moving game and if you are sitting in the paint you never know if you will be fallen on or kept safe. You are right in the action.

Girls Basketball, just like boys, is fun to photograph. Our girls basketball team, historically, is better than the boys, so it’s always fun to photograph them getting a win.

Dance is not my favorite thing to photograph but I love seeing how their performances improve over the season. It is always fun to look back through the pictures and see where you could be next time to get the right angle on a certain move.

When I photograph soccer it is mostly c team and jv. Soccer is not something I’m the best at, but when it needs to be covered, or if it’s a rivalry game, I will be there.

Softball is difficult for me to photograph and I’m definitely not the best at it. There is dust flying everywhere, but when you get that perfect picture with the dust but can still clearly see their face, it is worth it.

I first started photographing cross country this year. As photo editor if no one signs up to photograph something it is my job to be there, and that’s what happened with cross country. I actually really enjoyed photographing cross county.

Photographing crowd means a lot of waiting with your back turned to the game, just waiting for the right moment the crowd erupts. But when you get the perfect crowd shot there is nothing like it.

As photo editor I have photographed almost every assembly. When we have assemblies there is a lot to cover. The choir is singing, there is a drum line, cheer and dancer perform. It is such a fun environment to photograph in, with everyone in the school there too.

Leaving Iowa was my first spread ever, so the pictures from it hold a special place in my heart. Leaving Iowa was my first student life event/topic I had ever taken pictures at and it was really different from taking pictures of sports so it was a bit of learning curve to what I was normally used to.

This year was my first time photographing debate. We needed someone to cover a Saturday tournament so I went. Taking pictures of debate was easy, I found the topics being debated interesting and how passionate the debaters were was inspiring.

Marching band and color guard is really cool to photograph. It is one of my favorites because the different types of pictures you get are really cool. You have kids dancing, marching, the drum line, the flags that color guard uses make cool layers. I think that color guard and marching band pictures have so much story telling, especially because they are telling a story through the performance.

I like photographing orchestra because the whole orchestra comes together and it’s really cool seeing the whole stage lit up. During their performances we also get to see the individual orchestra classes perform separately.

Academic coverage for me is the hardest thing. You want to have fun, engaging photos and not just kids sitting at their desk. This means there is a lot of coordination with teachers to find out when they are doing projects.