MY STORIES:

• Economy hurting low-income legal help
• Mediation saves families money
• Attorney strives to help families adopt
• For one mother, biology doesn’t matter

MY BLOG:

Covering this beat in class was harder than I would have ever thought. I have worked at The Daily Utah Chronicle as a photographer and photo editor for more than two years. I have worked with people and have worked on getting access in a number of different situations, but never relating to the law.

The problems started when the family in the case I was assigned were out of the country and could not be reached by an adoption attorney for the law firm MacArthur, Heder and Metler Paul MacArthur. This was the first time I had worked with the legal system and it was a rough start, but luckily for me MacArthur was a great guy and allowed me to do a profile on him and gave me a long interview and contacts for a coworker, a client and his wife. After all the horror stories you hear about attorneys, it was great to work with someone who was easy to work with and gave me so much of his time.

The interview process was the worst for me. Like I said, I have worked as a photographer for years and taken notes during interviews but my notes usually involve a two-sentence cutline under a photo. As I found out, there is a big difference in note taking for cutlines and notet aking for a 500- or 1200-word story.

It took hours to listen to recorded interviews and type up my notes. Often, I couldn’t understand what people said or forgot to ask detail-orientated questions, which forced me to call or e-mail the source again to find out what I had missed. It’s difficult to ask the right questions when you don’t know what the end result will be. Reporting and writing stories is a good skill, but if possible, I’d rather stick with photography as much as possible.

MY BIO:

I was born and raised in Utah. I have lived on the west side of Salt Lake City in Rose Park my whole life.

I have been a sports fan for as long as I can remember and hockey is by far my favorite sport to play and watch. I used to spend hours in the street playing hockey with my brother, Travis, and my neighbors, Derek and Justin Goudie, when I was growing up.

Now I’m a student at the University of Utah working toward becoming a photojournalist. I work at The Daily Utah Chronicle, the student newspaper at the University of Utah. I enjoy taking pictures at sporting events, especially hockey, basketball and football. With photography I have room to experiment, including playing with lighting and different angles that hopefully no one else has thought of.

I have won multiple awards from the Society of Professional Journalists for illustrations and sports photographs I have done in the past two years. This year I took second place in Sports Photography for the Utah Press Association, a contest that The Daily Utah Chronicle competes against the Salt Lake Tribune and Desert News, two professional newspapers in Salt Lake City.

It’s a tough job making sure art and photographs on the paper look good every day and one that keeps me working late. But it’s good experience for the work I hope to do after graduating. Someday I want to be a photographer for Sports Illustrated.

Filed under: Blogs & Bios, Student-Journalists |