Prior to joining The Feather team in 2021 as a video journalist, I had a deep infatuation with history. Learning about where we come from and why everything is the way that it gives me purpose and makes me excited to be alive. When I was about three or four years old my mom let me take pictures around the house with a little camera that she had. During large gatherings, I would take photos of family members and inanimate objects. Sometimes I find myself looking back at those pictures and smiling because they remind me of a simpler time, when everyone looked younger and my interest in preserving the past was just getting started.
As I grew up and started taking summer classes around the age of 10 I began to learn my interests and my capabilities. During one week of summer, my parents enrolled me into a film and editing class located at Fresno State. This was one of the few places where I felt a sense of belonging. Not only was it fun to make short films and learn how to cut as well as paste clips but I also had a better connection with everyone while doing it.
Fast forward to when I was about 12 years old. By this point, I had just received my very first phone and all I wanted to do was take videos. I would make extremely bad skits and perform them in front of the camera along side filming day-to-day activities. I was essentially a bad actor and horrible vlogger but it made me happy, making videos was all I wanted to do.
At 13 I had the opportunity to travel with my mom and great-grandmother to both the countries of Spain and Italy. It is still the greatest opportunity of my life and I love every second of it. Similarly to when I was a kid, my mom created a photo album consisting of experiences that we shared together. The only difference between this trip and my past photography adventures is that I recorded everything on my phone.
It was around this same time that I joined Mathew Vincent’s “Intro to Video Production” class for my seventh and eighth-grade years. It was in this class where I truly felt that Fresno Christian was my home. All the friends that I had in middle school and some in high school where because we shared a command interest in making dumb skits. It was in Video production that I learned how to navigate Premier Pro and how to use different camera angles.
By the age of sixteen, I officially joined The Feather team as a video journalist. I initially assumed that Feather would be like video production class but that was far from the truth. In reality, Video productions class never prepared me for the real world like The Feather has. I learned more in The Feather than I have in any other class because in Feather they have pushed me past my limits. It’s because of The Feather that I have far exceeded my capabilities in videography and have created numerous Instagram reels on a variety of topics. My favorite Videos to film were the science labs for Scott Bucher and Jacob Cantu’s Chemistry, Biology, and Anatomy classes respectively.
Overall the experiences I gained on and off The Feather team are unforgettable and have shaped me into the person that I am now. Without having teachers believe in me or a team to back me up I would not have gone as far as I did. After our trip to New York, I realized that The Feather is less of a team and more like a family.
To see more senior reflections visit TheFeatherOnline.
Created by: Cole Blanchfield
