The Hunt

           (Sara Winkler/ Staff Photographer)

Members of His House Christian Fellowship at CMU share a moment outside of their residence with Alison Crary and her 10-month-old son Miles, family of the fellowship’s new pastor on campus, Scott Crary. The all male house, located at the corner of Main Street and Bellows Street, hosts nightly dinners Monday through Thursday for anyone who wishes to join. “They are people we meet in our classes or who we’re in clubs with” said Midland senior Joe Vercellino, second from left. “It’s been one of the coolest ways to create relationships around campus. Pastor Scott Crary and his family already feel at home with the members on campus and were special guests to celebrate their arrival. “I’ve been able to hang out with them which is good” said Crary. “We follow where God leads and this is it.”


Feature hunting is a process that can be intimidating, and at times, rather difficult for a photojournalist. However, it is one that can prove to be extremely rewarding and reveal some of the most compelling moments in photojournalism. The mission is to capture that simple significance that passes most of us by unnoticed, a quest for emotion and for human interaction. Feature photos celebrate life and display candid moments that tell the reader a story and evoke raw emotion inside of them just from viewing the photograph.

How then, do we go about finding such compelling action? In order to discover worthwhile occurrences, you need to put yourself out there. Don’t be afraid to step out into the unknown, to take a day to explore your surroundings.

My hunt began by driving up and down Pickard Street, one of the busiest roads in Mount Pleasant, Mich. It was a smoldering 92 degree day, so I anticipated finding a good amount of people at Doozies Ice Cream Place, a small gem of the city which is enjoyed by many students and townies alike. After awhile of passing it by back and forth, I realized I was only wasting time and going about my hunt in the wrong way. I didn’t want to plan the moment I hoped to capture; I wanted to come upon it naturally.

    A few cruises down side streets, around campus and a couple stops at local parks later, I began losing hope and headed in the direction back to my house. I was tired, sweating and irritated, but determined to make a good picture. You can never quit during your search, because you could always find something when you least expect it, which is exactly what happened for me that Monday evening.

Walking back to my place along Main Street, I noticed a few guys grilling chicken on their front porch and setting up a couple long tables with chairs in the lawn in front of their house. It turned out that the residence belonged to CMU’s His House Christian Fellowship. I was curious about their plans and decided to stop and see what they were up to. Before I knew it, I was welcomed with open arms and seated for dinner at a table of about 11.

His House Christian Fellowship has began hosting nightly dinners Monday through Thursday and in an attempt to reach out to the students and community around them, they invite new friends to share the meal each night. The dinner I happened to stumble upon was being held in honor of His House’s new pastor on campus, Scott Crary. The pastor, along with his wife and their two young children, enjoyed the meal with everyone and stayed for some short conversation afterward.

Although the delicious food was a bit of a distraction, I kept my eye open and shot a lot of frames throughout my visit, hoping to capture a genuine moment. It wasn’t until right before I left when I noticed the group of all male residents huddled around the pastor’s wife and her 10-month-old son. The child was very enthusiastic and expressive, and the group observed the mother and son together with smiles and amusement. I saw in that moment true joy, laughter, and love. I knew I had my shot.


Camera: Nikon D60
Focal Length: 32
ISO: 200

Aperture: 5

Shutter: 1/320

Program: Manual

White Bal.: Auto

Haiti: Storytelling Images

Photos by Libby March/Staff Photographer 

Magdaniel Delvas, 6, jumps rope Aug. 12 at My Heart's Home Orphanage in Port Au Prince, Haiti.  Magdaniel is the son of Pastor Magnus Delvas, a minister who lives with his wife and their three other sons at My Heart's Home as part of the staff caring for ten orphaned children, ranging from one to six years old.

Jake May's Take:
When choosing which photographs to run in the print edition of the newspaper, some great images get left on the cutting room floor. Editing down the Haiti take by Staff Photographer Libby March was incredibly difficult because so many of the photos had such great storytelling moments. These four photos included in this post are prime examples of great work that just did not have room to run in print.

The edit started simply with 45GB of photos, a feat that was first tackled by Libby March herself. Once she brought it down to about 500-plus total, Assistant Photo Editor Sean Proctor and myself sat down with her over a cup of coffee to bring it down even further. We ended up with 97 photos at this point. Sean and I then went back through one more time to really focus on what told the story best in about 10 to 12 images. And each of these images were in that final edit.

We then had to determine which photos to lose to best tell the story in fewer images. So we did. The cuts we made were to show more of the life and interaction between the volunteers from Mount Pleasant with the Haitian children at My Heart's Home. We wanted to show the children's personalities, and honestly, their curiosity with the volunteers at work. We also wanted to synchronize storytelling moments in photos that pair with the written story. A lot goes into this process, and if we could, we would have played them all, but that could not happen.

As for the photos you are looking at, please take the time to look at them, and understand what value each has with the original story. Each is a storytelling moment that, alas, did not make the final print edit, but as I said before, they are fantastic example of what the Central Michigan Life photo staff strives for in daily and long-term project work. Truly phenomenal photojournalism.


Jonathan Delvas, 5, left, looks up at his brother Magdaniel Delvas, 6, top bunk, as Yolette Louis, 4, laughs, under the observation of Leicka Sidney, 2, held by Ciera Allen, 11, of Coleman, August 12 at My Heart's Home orphanage in Port Au Prince, Haiti. The children are playing on a newly constructed bunk, one of seven bunks built by HCI volunteers Steve Shanaver and Lonny Phillips.



Pastor Ron Ives of Potter's House Family Worship Center in Mount Pleasant prays over a member of Pastor Magnus Delvas' church August 15 in Port Au Prince, Haiti.


Sean Proctor's Take:
Choosing a photo to lead off a page or a story is a difficult task. Essentially, you have to find a photo that not only looks good, but is story-telling, will draw your viewers in and is also well composed. A good caption and a solid moment go a long way as well, be it a daily assignment where you took anywhere from 50 to 200 frames, or a mission trip to Haiti, where you took over 45 gigs of photos.

Editing down thousands and thousands of photos to a few hundred is exhausting. Which has better focus, what's the better moment? The light is nicer in this one, they're looking at the camera, this has a better background or better layers. However, editing down the few hundred to about a dozen photos takes an intensely critical eye, as well as the ability to say "out" to a photo you really are attached to.

When Jake May (Photo Editor), Libby March (Staff Photographer) and myself (Assistant Photo Editor) sat down over our staple of coffee and bagels to sort through her few hundred photo edit for the A3 photo page and A7 jump, we had to be able to make those hard decisions. It sounds silly to say that, "hard decisions", but to create a story that stands on its own, as well as with the story? It really is quite difficult.

Within an hour, we had narrowed the number of photos into the double digits. 97. Which means we still had to lose at least 80 more photos before we even started getting close to where we needed to be. It was time to nitpick. To be harsh enough to ax a photo because the focus was off by a hair, or the almost minuscule detail of the photo made it worth ditching. 97 became 70-something, which became 40-something, which became 20-something, which became 10 or 12, depending on the edit.

In a story like this, every aspect is important. You need to see the Heart Cry volunteers, you need to see the orphans, you need to see work, you need to see play, you need to see interaction and emotional connection. You need all of these photos to work with the story. Every photo printed did this, every photo played its part. Yet, Jake and I found ourselves still wanting these four photos you see here to play. We swapped out other photos, tried different positioning and crops. Does it work better as a secondary? Or, as I call it, a tertiary? What makes the most graphic impact to warrant the 6-column main?

Sure, I can give you a reason why each one of these photos got the cut, but regardless of that, each of these photos bring an important of the story into its frame, and each frame is exceptional in its own right.


Shelda Joseph, 3, plays alone with a toy in the boys' room August 10 at My Heart's Home orphanage in Port Au Prince, Haiti.

The Friday Feature: Yolette Louis

(Libby March/Staff Photographer)

Photo column by Staff Photographer Libby March

At a table brimming with 14 other children, in the midst of the chaos and poverty of a third world nation, a 4-year-old girl sits quietly dissecting her sandwich into pieces, giving away two bites for each she eats.

Her name is Yolette Louis and she lives at an orphanage called My Heart’s Home in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti.

I met Yolette two and a half weeks ago while documenting a group of eight volunteers on a 10-day mission trip to the orphanage as part of Heart Cry International, a nonprofit based in Mount Pleasant. The time in Haiti was one of the most unexpectedly beautiful experiences of my life, but what I’ll remember most is this child who has nothing, but gives all.

Mission trips can really test your mettle. You sleep little, eat little and have little privacy. Endurance is pivotal, since you must maintain an attitude of service. Irritability is not an option.

I’ve been on service trips before, but for me, Haiti was a new frontier in character building.

One afternoon I was sitting on the floor monitoring a 3-year-old’s descent into a PB and J sandwich when I looked up to see Yolette’s simple act of altruism. She broke her meal into pieces for fellow orphanage children Djoulie and Fedeline, with the remaining third for herself.

Throughout the week, I realized Yolette does this at every meal. Her selflessness is remarkable in a person so very young. You’ve heard the phrase “ray of sunshine” – Yolette is a whole sun, beaming joy at anyone who makes eye contact.

(Libby March/Staff Photographer)

HCI tripper Nichole Osborn refers to Yolette as “a little mama.” It’s true. I saw Yolette calm the tears of Kenlie, a constantly fussy 1-year-old. Joshua and Shilore, two of the more robust boys, were often hard to control, but quieted when Yolette, clucking like a little hen, shooed them away from smaller boys like Solomon and Jocelyn.

I watched this little girl do things I, at 21, have never done. Yolette has nothing, but she gives constantly for the benefit of those around her. She bursts through clouds like a megawatt, pint-sized Mother Teresa.

When I think of Yolette I’m forced to ask myself – what have I given? My world is wrought with advantages I take for granted. Yet with all I have, I give less than an orphan under half my age.

If we all shared like Yolette does, wouldn’t we all be better off?

There’s a lot of talk about the desolation and corruption of Haiti. It’s no secret that January’s earthquake rocked an already-broken country almost into dust. Even now the rubble has hardly been cleared, but in the eight short days I was there, I didn’t lose heart – I’d like to think I gained it.

As long as there is selflessness like Yolette’s, I believe there’s hope for Haiti.

And for humanity.

(Courtesy Photo by Nichole Osborn)

Central Michigan Life Staff Photographer Libby March hugs four-year-old Yolette Louis, right, and Magdaniel Delvas, 6, in mid-August while volunteering at an orphanage called My Heart’s Home in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti with Heart Cry International, a nonprofit based in Mount Pleasant.

Illuminating Illustration

A photo illustration always opens up a creative window and gives a photojournalist some freedom to step outside of the box and to try something different. When making a photo illustration, you are essentially taking a story or a concept and portraying it through an image in a symbolic way.

The idea to demonstrate Facebook’s latest adjustments in privacy settings involved showing the urge to break through censorship. We wanted to take the concept and show it in a very literal way. We thought this could be done best by electing a model and using black Gaffers tape placed over his mouth to represent censorship. Obscenity symbols, which are frequently used in place of censored words or images, were written by the model onto the tape in bright white paint to make a big contrast from the black tape.

A photo illustration can be a dynamic picture just by adding some studio lighting. In this case, we used a small room as our studio, with a large black sheet for a clean, dark backdrop. We set up three strobes to light the model in a way that would give good effect to his face. One strobe on a light stand was placed behind the model, who sat on a stool in front of the backdrop, and faced the camera for rim light, which illuminated the edges of his face and visually separated him from the dark background. Two other strobes on light stands were placed in front of the model at about a 45 degree angle to his left side. These were used as fill light, and were faced into an umbrella, which bounced the light and reflected it onto his face.

After setting up and proceeding with some test shots, we noticed that we still weren’t achieving enough light on the model’s face. We then decided to bring in an additional strobe, which was held by hand to the model’s back left side and directed across into a white shirt which was used to reflect the light to fill in the model’s right side of his face.

In order to sync all of the lighting so that each strobe fires off at the same time for even results, pocket wizard transmitters are used, which connect with each other and trigger each strobe to fire simultaneously. Five were used in our lighting setup, four connected to each strobe and one in the hot shoe mount on the top of the camera.

We wanted to create a tight frame, which highlighted the obscenity symbols and the model’s expression. The idea was to show a breakthrough in censorship, so we urged the model to scream loudly with big expression to illustrate this. When the model screamed hard enough to literally break through the tape, we knew we had our shot.

(Sara Winkler/Staff Photographer)

Milford junior Nick Combs demonstrates censoring yourself on Facebook as he screams through a cracked hole in Gaffers tape to avoid the potential effects of the website's decreased default privacy settings. Facebook initially displayed significantly less personal information to anyone but friends the user voluntarily selected. 

Camera: Nikon D300s
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 1250
Aperture: 11
Shutter: 1/250
Program: Manual
White Bal.: Auto

Lighting: Household lights and a iPhone

So, you want to set up a lighting situation in the comfort of your own home but you’re not quite sure where to begin.  Well, it’s not too hard assuming you have the lighting equipment at hand or if you have enough friends to loan them to you.  The first thing you want to remember is that light is your most important element when it comes to a photograph so don’t get frustrated when you don’t get it right the first time.  We have all been there, it’s called trial and error.  I personally went into this photo shoot ambivalent of all my light sources and how to balance them out.  Trial and error.  I walked out of there with this photograph.

(Victoria Zegler/Staff Photographer)

First things first, you want to clear your surroundings without clutter.  Couches, tables, and boxes should be moved unless you want them in the frame as a prop.  If you have a white wall in your home, that is your best option for your backdrop.  Why?  Well, walls and ceilings are good for bouncing light off of when using a strobe (otherwise known as a flash) and the color white doesn’t give you a tint to your subject.  Whenever shooting with a strobe, it’s good to have a pocket notebook handy to bounce light off onto your subject.  So what have we got so far?  A camera, strobe, a subject and your backdrop (the wall).  For our photo shoot, we had many different lamps illuminating our subject from many different angles.  

In the tall lamps near our subject Ian’s face we had energy saving Halogen bulbs which lit up his face on both sides.  Most of the desk lamps on the floor were fluorescent bulbs you can buy for $1.50 down the street.  Each lamp was set up around Ian to illuminate him from every angle like a half circle, as you can see in the photograph.  Once you have the lighting positioned the way you want it, the way it should look, turn you camera on to test it.  You may notice it looks “hot,” meaning it has a yellow or orange tint to it from the heat of the lamps which needs to be toned down.  Adjust your settings, starting with your ISO making sure it’s set properly.  Next, your white balance which corresponds to the type of light being taken in by your camera needs to be set too, in our case fluorescent.  After those are set you can start playing with your shutter speed and aperture settings to see where you need to be set for shooting.  For Ian’s shoot, my settings were:

Model: NIKON D700

Focal Length: 35

ISO: 400

Aperture: 2.8

Shutter: 1/250

Program: Manual

White Bal.: Fluorescent

Are you still with me?  Good.  Once you have your camera set you can get your trigger finger ready and rarin’ to go.  Don’t be afraid to work with angles, distance and not to mention...your subject!  You may be behind a camera but you’re not invisible, communication is key!  You’re creative so let it flow :)  Share your ideas with your subject and have them share their ideas with you because in the end you both could walk out with awesome photographs.

NO SERIOUSLY...THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT...

Helping with photo shoots is a lot of fun. It’s just a lot of goofing off, messing around and eventually coming away with a front page image. There are a few things that, to me, are very important in photography. Knowing your equipment is one, the other is “seeing” with the equipment you have. So, we were illuminating Ian with various lamps (and a lantern for good measure), I was playing around with my girlfriend’s iPhone, specifically with the “Hipstamatic” application. This app allows you to select different “lenses”, “flashes” and “films” to add that vintage plastic/toy camera feel to an image. I’ve been playing around with this app for a while, so I’m starting to get the hang of what feel specific combimations create. As Victoria was snapping away, directing Ian to stand like this, or do that, I saw an image I thought would be pretty interesting. 

(Sean Proctor/Assistant Photo Editor)

My “HipstaSettings” were:

Model: iPhone 3G

Lens: John S

Film: Kodot Verichrome

Flash: Standard

It ended up being a pretty cool shot. The lantern in front adds a dynamic to the image, which was funny to begin with, but now is paired with the ridiculousness of Hipstamtic app. I think the best part of it is that it shows that you can make a fun, cool, dynamic, or totally awesome image using whatever equipment you have on hand. You don’t need the latest, greatest, most expensive photo equipment...All you need is a camera. Sure, we could go into the technical aspects of it all (I’m not going to print this out to a wall size poster), but just take whatever you got and go out and shoot.