Reflecting on my time "behind the scenes"

This summer I got to work as an intern at the Transcript, and my favorite part of the job was being behind the camera.

At the end of the school year our Black Sox boys made it to state baseball, which hadn't been done in 24 years. I covered the region championship and several of the state games. I remember being in the dugout on the last play of the region championship game. I was getting ready to take all of the celebration shots when one of our players turned to look at me and told me to move because they were all gonna jump over the fence so they could run to celebrate with their boys and didn’t want me to get hit. And believe me they did. Every. Single. One.

My favorite part of taking pictures was getting to be in the dugout with the team for that exact reason. I've known most of the players my whole life and getting to take pictures at one of the most exciting things these boys have gotten to do in their entire high school careers was insane. I may have just been taking pictures, but I got to hear and see these boys fight to win every game, even if they did struggle through it.

I loved when they would ask me to take a picture for them or they would see me take a picture and ask to see it because they were excited about the great play I ended up capturing.

I remember Easton asking to take photos with my camera on more than one occasion because he wanted to “capture Si’s aura.” Most of them turned out blurry, but it was always fun watching them have fun with the camera by taking random photos of each other.

One of my favorite days at state baseball was when the boys put a ton of eye black all over their faces making mustaches, “masks” and a couple of other things. When I asked about it, they said even though we may have lost our other games, we still want to come out have fun and enjoy being here for our last game. I had never seen these boys persevere like this before. It was electrifying to hear them in those dugouts. It made me love my job seeing them do something they love.

One of the pictures I took was a group of them up against the dugout fence with their “war paint.” They thought it was the greatest thing.

Another thing that I love is getting to go through and pick out which photos to upload onto our online gallery, transcript.smugmug.com, and what photos to put in the paper for the week. I look through all of the photos I took and pick out the best ones. Some people may think the best pictures are of the players making a great play, but personally my favorite are the “behind the scenes” photos that most people would never see unless they were with the team – such as Thomas Allmaras jumping on the bench shaking the whole dugout during region finals. The boys were dying laughing and having a great time. Being there in the moment taking those photos, and then looking through all of them was an experience, and feeling, I’ll never forget.

I also used Adobe's layout and page design software for print and digital media called InDesign, which could be an absolute pain some days. I worked on a cookbook; personally, I have never seen more recipes in my life in a cookbook – and now we're adding more. It was interesting learning all of the techniques from using the program as I’m not used to the software. This ended up being a great project for me to learn on.

I also got to design some advertisements for events going on over the Fourth of July, which was a ton of fun. I got to have creative freedom, which was my favorite part because I put my own flair on it. The one I enjoyed working on the most was the cornhole tournament at Hanson’s. I was told to make it colorful and fun. While working on this project I learned that most people tend to pay more attention to posters that are dramatic and bold with color. That is definitely something I will be keeping in mind when I own my own business and need to promote it.

My final project was working on the activity calendars for New Rockford-Sheyenne and Midkota schools. I set all of the days in the Midkota calendar, including putting in all the games for the upcoming sports seasons (my favorite part of school). I realized through doing it that this year's volleyball season has been pushed back a week, which is different from the last few years I have played. However, that means I can make it to more games this year to watch all of my friends in high school volleyball.

For New Rockford, I chose some of the photos that go into the calendar. I was very excited as it's another place I could use pictures I’ve taken while working here. I went through each week of the year and put them into each month. Some showcased all of the athletes from NR-S; others are photos of community things that have gone on throughout the year, like Santa Days. I remember being younger and sometimes recognizing people in the photos. Now I look through and see all of my friends playing sports they love, or doing something cool in the community.