PHOTOJOURNALISM
In the photo above, I photograph the aftermath of the Kincade wildfire in Santa Rosa, Calif. in November 2019. I traveled two hours each way to document this scene firsthand for the student body.
I stumbled upon a love for photography in ninth grade while visiting relatives in China. They wanted to take me to a stunning lake in Jiuzhaigou National Park.
Only problem: it required hiking a mountain in the snow.
Being a Californian, I hardly felt reassured by the umbrella my relatives handed me to ward off the falling flakes.
But later, while trekking up the side of the mountain, I looked up from my shoes sloshing on the path, and saw a line of colorful umbrellas snaking their way into the horizon, framed by stark tree branches and a pure white sky.
At that moment, my doubts dissipated into excitement. I snapped a picture with my phone. Looking back and forth from the picture to the scene in front of me, I marveled at how that image captured the beauty of the moment.
From then on, I experimented with a camera whenever I could, testing how different lighting could change a mood and exploring the effect of low shutter speed on the look of nighttime traffic.
Scroll down for an interactive story about my beginning in photojournalism, or view it full screen here.
Scroll down to see more of my photos. Hover over the photos for captions.
ROAD TO 2020: on the campaign trail
Here, I photograph Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) from a raised platform for press during his rally in San Francisco on March 24, 2019.
The first presidential campaign event that I covered was a phone-banking event for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election – which I reported on as a terrified freshman.
Now, four years later, another election cycle has come around, and I have had the privilege of documenting it as it happens – in the press stand and the media box.
During these events, instead of focusing exclusively on the candidates behind the podium, I turn my camera around to capture the small but special moments in the audience – the upturned faces, waved posters and wide eyes as people watch history unfold before them.
Above is the Flickr archive for the National Scholastic Press Association’s (NSPA) Campaign 2020 Photo Exchange Project, featuring 226 of my political photos.
CAMPAIGN 2020 PHOTO EXCHANGE
Over several months in 2019 and 2020, I worked with my adviser and other reporters on staff to collaborate with journalism programs across the country and make a shared database of political photos that any scholastic journalist could use with proper attribution.
Now, only a few months after the database has launched, the site is filled with thousands of photos, shared by high school and college student-journalists across the nation.
ELECTION PHOTOS
TAKING IT TO THE STREETS
Here, I take photos of youth protesters at the San Jose March for Our Lives Rally against gun violence on March 24, 2018.
“No more silence end gun violence,” nearly a thousand students chanted in unison. “Protect kids not guns!” Their voices thundered in my ears.
As rain began to pour down, their voices were matched by actual thunder. I covered my camera lens with plastic wrap and continued taking photos and video of the San Jose March for Our Lives protest against gun violence, the first major protest I covered in my sophomore year.
This protest propelled me on a course to covering all manner of free speech and activism in my local area, with a special focus on Harker students, teachers and local youth exercising their First Amendment rights.
Since the March for Our Lives, I have covered protests ranging from a climate strike outside of a Democratic National Committee Convention, to a Native American tribe’s fight to preserve its cultural sites, to the Women’s March in San Francisco in January 2020 with over 37,000 demonstrators in attendance.
women’s march, san francisco 2020
native american protest, san juan bautista 2019
climate protest, san francisco 2019
march for our lives, san jose 2018
recovering from disaster
Since meeting wildfire photographer Stephen Lam at a Beto O'Rourke town hall in San Francisco, I have felt inspired by his line of work. Journalists such as Lam genuinely put their life on the line to do a service for their community, informing the world from inside the jaws of a danger zone.
As wildfires have increasingly become an expected part of California life in the last few years, they have impacted our school community as well. Though the fires themselves have not reached our school, just last year our head nurse distributed face masks to students as the on-campus air quality from the Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif. became dangerously unhealthy.
So when the Kincade wildfire started burning large swaths of Sonoma County in October 2019, it was major news for our student body.
When it was safe to do so, I made the two hour drive north to Sonoma and documented the fire’s artifacts – vineyards, wineries, mail boxes and vehicles that were destroyed or bore the mark of the flames.
With these photos, I hoped to tell a different side of the story than the hundreds of images that had come out of the fire – I wanted to show the community’s recovery and resilience.
Above, I photograph the partially burned down facade of the 150-year-old Soda Rock Winery in Sonoma County.
When I covered the Kincade fire’s aftermath in Sonoma County, I stopped by the local fire station to interview firefighters who had been on the frontlines fighting the flames. They requested to take this picture with me after our interviews.
that’s the spirit!
Here I interview a senior team captain of the varsity girls’ volleyball team immediately following their senior night celebrations.
The stands were packed with a sea of students wearing pitch black. Some even had black war paint streaked across their faces and black bandanas covering their mouths. As the spirit coordinator finished a countdown from three, the stands erupted into one deafening shout.
Normally, I would be in the stands, yelling with them, but today, I was covering the annual spring spirit rally for the Winged Post. Instead of shouting with my classmates, I was pointing a Nikon D7000 towards them, capturing every moment.
game on
I photograph sports for many of the same reasons that I enjoy playing them. When I photographed and wrote articles for 11 of my school football team’s 12-game season my sophomore year, I felt that I became just as much a part of the team as any other player.
I love the rush of adrenaline when covering a truly intense sports game. After every game I cannot wait to crank up my shutter speed in preparation for the next one.
Here I take pictures of my wrestling teammates during their matches at the Del Mar Invitational on Jan. 26, 2019. Wrestling shoes on, I had just finished wrestling my own match before hurriedly grabbing a camera to cover a teammate’s.
A Harker wrestler wraps his leg over his opponent, pinning him to the ground at a January 27, 2018 tournament at Del Mar High School. The Harker wrestler placed second in his 127 lb. weight class. Photo by Eric Fang
street photography
From June 7-18, 2019, I and 10 other reporters from the Winged Post and Talon yearbook traveled to London to take a short course on documentary photography at the London College of Communications (LCC). There, not only did author Max Houghton lecture on the aesthetics of photography, but she also spoke of the morality and ethics of it as well, through the lens of contemporary social issues and politics.
Through this course, I learned to look at my surroundings with a more critical eye, constantly searching for more unique angles and evaluating the social impact of my photographs. Between lectures, Houghton encouraged us to freely roam the city and tasked us with compiling a photo story. As a group, we took photos at the antique market on Portobello Road, the British War Museum, Borough Market, the Barbican, London Bridge and the Greenwich observatory.