Hannah SmithYearbook Portfolio

The caption for Maddy McClain and Alaina McCumber was the first caption I ever wrote for yearbook and at first, I didn’t know what I was doing. I wrote the caption about a movie that they were talking about going to but I had to change it a couple weeks later to make it about the keychains on her backpack. I made an extra effort after this caption to make sure that all my future captions directly related to the topic.

I was having trouble finding opportunities to take candid photos for the Student Life backpack spread but after a couple days of struggling, I started becoming more aware of photo opportunities. I took this picture in the few moments before the bell to release us from APUSH class rang and I was proud of the way that it turned out because it wasn’t posed and Alaina McCumber isn’t likely to be featured much in the yearbook. The white balance turned out a little too yellow and I adjusted the exposure, saturation, and contrast using Photoshop which I had not used extensively to edit photos before.

I had to overcome my reluctance to approach random students for this picture. Up until this photo, I had mainly covered people I knew but I decided to expand my coverage. This was also a day during which not many people dressed up. The theme was changed last minute so I had to work harder in order to take the amount of pictures required.

This picture overall was difficult to take because Libby Ruff was in Mrs. Tait’s class and she is very stict about letting people out of class. I had to double check and ensure that I could pull Libby out of class and I scheduled it with Mrs. Tait. This also was my first cutout. Before I joined yearbook, I only knew how to do cutouts using the quick selection tool but I learned how to use the polygonal lasso tool on Photoshop to make a more precise cutout. This helped, especially because her hair was so difficult to cut out.

I was sent to cover the girls soccer game “pre game ritual” during which apparently they danced to “No Hands.” Upon getting to the field thirty minutes early to make sure I didn’t miss it, I was told by the players that it was made up and that they did not actually have a dance. This was unexpected and I didn’t know what to do so I just tried to get good pictures of the warm up in general. I had to adjust the manual settings on my camera several times as the photos kept turning out overexposed or too blurry but I finally got the right balance down.

I took the junior class officer pictures for Maddie and Landon. This was more of a challenge than I expected because coordinating schedules proved very difficult. I ended up driving one of them to UT and it took about two hours after school. It was easy for them to laugh and smile with each other because they were all friends but it was hard trying to think of variety for their group shots.

I covered all three First Priority lunches this day which provided some extra opportunities for shots I would have missed if I had only gone to one lunch. I had to quickly run over to capture this image in between first and second lunch. I also had to stand farther away than I expected and had to get low to the ground as I wanted the water tower to be in the background.

This was an exceptionally difficult spread to get pictures for, as nearly no students showed up to the football game. We were covering the “extensive student section” so I had to get creative and try to take photos from a low angle in order to make the students look bigger. I managed to take this silhouette shot by standing at the top of the bleachers and looking down on the field. By adjusting the contrast and exposure on Photoshop, I enhanced the silhouettes and tweaked the coloring a bit.

It was difficult to get photos for the Life Hacks page because I had to try to take everyday photos that were candid. I brought my camera to school almost everyday hoping to spot photo opportunities. To take this photo, I got in the lot early and tried to find someone locking their car. It was one of the first times that I used my new 50 mm lens so I had to stand far back in order to take the picture as it does not adjust zoom. I also used Photoshop to crop the car door out in order to create a more aesthetically pleasing picture.

I wrote copy for the first time for the October student section spread. It was particularly hard for me as in my first draft, I stuggled in remembering various AP Style rules and wrote multiple sentences in passive voice. I had to rewrite this copy several times and play with the wording over and over again. I also had to try to avoid bias as it was tempting to use certain complementary adverbs or adjectives, which is something I got marked off for at NSPA. It was also difficult to get a quote from the Panther as his/her identity remained a secret.