My Photojournalism Journey Brandi Alvey Comp 1/ Mrs. Pitlik

A great photo happens when a photographer sees a situation unfolding in front of them that evokes an emotion that the photographer feels deep down in the middle of their chest. Within a split second, they make a conscience choice of exposure, lens, depth of field, lighting, body language, composition, and then release the shutter. The film is then processed, scanned, laid out on a page, printed, and press driven across town to the newspaper carrier, who looks down at that photo…and if that person gets the same feeling deep down in the middle of their chest that the photographer did when they viewed the situation in the first place, then the photographer has made a great photo. I have always had an active, vivid imagination. My memory is my strongest quality that I have. That’s what I have answered in previous interviews when asked this particular question. I can remember things in very specific ways by closing my eyes, reliving that moment or experience again and again. Sometimes, this quality is a good thing and at other times it can be hard to forget the bad things that I do not desire to remember. I have had this keen sense of memory from an early age, although now it seems much harder to retain things the older I get. I can still recall the bits and pieces and name out the specifics to those past memories, but the length of the replay is much shorter than before. I still do the same today with new memories and that has led me to understand my passion for photography. I was raised by my lovely grandmother. My mother and father were not much in my childhood photos. I remember my grandmother had this walnut octagon curio cabinet of photos filled from top to bottom with all types of polaroid photographs, black and white, color, sepia, etc. I was around the age of 6 years old sitting there studying those photographs as I instilled images with luminous radiation in my memory photo bank forever. I lived in those photos, dreamed in them, cried, laughed, and later in life I proudly stored those photographs in an album of my own to cherish. I am now able to look back at them to experience the whole sequence of emotions that they all bring back to me. Photographs are very important; not only do they tell stories, but they create dreams, hopes, and aspirations. They will indulge your imagination, evoke emotion, and recreate timeless moments again and again to treasure. Photographs are very powerful even though they can only be processed by one of our many senses, sight. I like to think if you’re truly lucky you may reach another sense other than sight and that would be smell. A smell of a very old photo brings back the years of its existence. As a little girl I understood how powerful and precious it is to have even the small amount of photos I have of my long lost mother, father and childhood. I now understand with my own photographs the love and happiness of memories that later came in life through photographing my very own family. A photo of my mother is all I have ever had of her to know. That is pretty powerful piece of paper. I want to create many of those papers for others one day along with wanting to create images that tell stories, recreate memories, tell the truth, and capture timeless moments. This passion has led me to chase a dream that I have always had since I was that 6 year old little girl going through her grandmother’s photos. That dream is to be a professional photographer. I wanted to first start by taking all sort of genres of photographs. Doing so has helped me know exactly what type of photographer I desire to become. I yearn to create diversity in my future for taking photographs. I have figured out through exposing myself to several genres of photography which has led me to a certainty deep down with in my heart, soul, and deep within my bones;