For Joshua Halley, his
professional photography career was unplanned.
“I started by accident,” said Halley,
a sophomore at Southern University in Baton Rouge
where he works for the Southern Digest.
Halley’s career began during his freshman
year when he stumbled across an ad in his school
newspaper seeking staff photographers. Eager to
make extra money, Halley submitted his best work:
photos he’d taken during his senior high
school trip to Guatemala that included images
of the surrounding mountain ranges, small impoverished
villages, and happy children. These images were
good enough to earn him a spot on the staff.
Though his photojournalism career didn’t
begin until college, Halley has always loved photography.
“I started taking recreational pictures
when I was 4,” he said. “My dad was
an amateur photographer so I just played around
with his professional equipment.”
In his freshman year alone, Halley took more than
5,000 pictures, including sports, features and
profiles. He even photographed comedian Steve
Harvey, who made a celebrity appearance on campus.
Halley said his most memorable photo, however,
was a shot of a sunset over the bluff of the Mississippi
River on Southern’s campus, which is featured
in the 2004-2005 school yearbook.
The mass communications student, who often covers
football and basketball games, said his sports
photographs are the best.
“I have stronger images and I’m more
focused when I shoot sports,” Halley said
His biggest challenge is photographing images
for feature stories and profiles.
“I’m a perfectionist. I have an image
in my head… I keep shooting till I get it
the way I want,” Halley said.
His last feature photo took 45 minutes to perfect.
It was a portrait of a girl from the Congo who
survived the Rwandan massacre and relocated to
Baker, La.
Halley hopes to learn a great deal from the New
York Times Journalism Institute.
“My pictures are good, but they aren’t
great. Hopefully the direction here will lead
me to taking great pictures,” Halley said.
“One day I want to be the person taking
those Pulitzer pictures.”
|
