It’s been a while since I’ve really done any kind of writing or updates on everyday life, so I thought maybe now would be a good time to start. I’ve been a photojournalist now for 18 years… man, where has the time gone. It seems like only yesterday I was fresh out of college waiting to get a full-time gig somewhere. It’s been a crazy time, made some mistakes, had a few successes, but managed to keep my head down and go with the flow.
Before moving to Florida’s Treasure Coast, I covered a town and the surrounding area in West Texas, my home state, which I miss everyday. The communities I cover now could not be more different. Even six years on now and I still feel like an outsider here. The landscape is different, the people are different and the climate is different. And I don’t mean Florida but the newsroom setting as well. it’s all just… different.
But the show must go on and I have to keep producing photos, stories and projects in order to pay my way here. Which, by the way, is getting more and more expensive by the day. Everything cost more here. From housing, food and fuel, I hardly have enough funds to have any fun. And that’s what life is all about, right, fun?
I was asked to work on a project with a fellow reporter about a local community that is predominantly Black and the impact it has had on the citizens that it home. The first story we published, online yesterday (online Monday, 2/21/22, print Wednesday 2/23/22) was about the closing of the local high school and its impact on its students and the town in general. This is the video I produced for the story:
It’s a basic video of a few students who attended the school or. lived in the community at the time of its closing, but I think it gets the message across. It’s difficult to produce a video about something that no longer exists, having to rely solely on provided photos. I was really hoping to get some new visuals for this project but perhaps opportunities will arise. For now, I think this is a good start.