During my junior year in my AP Photography class at Carlmont High School in Belmont, California, I found a passion for my photography. Looking back on the beginning of the school year, I was fixated on only capturing plants and animals since it was in my comfort zone. Capturing people did not excite me at all at first. To me, they were difficult subjects. At the time, I thought there was only one second in a certain moment where you could capture their whole facial expression. Little did I know that capturing photos of people actually shows the hidden message of their personality. My AP Photography teacher, Ms. Hodges, showed me the beauty of stepping out of just taking the easy way out. She told me to go for the photos that are a little bit more challenging to take because at the end, they tell a compelling story. I remember the first time I tried to take my first environmental photo. I was in the car with my mom on the way to go film an event for Carlmont’s broadcast news source in San Francisco. In my lap was my camera and to pass time, I was flipping through settings to make sure I had the right ones. I look up to test my settings and point the camera to the window to capture whatever was on the street. To my right I saw a homeless middle-aged man sitting on the sidewalk, covered with dark blue untranscribable tattoos all over his chest, along with a small cigarette in one hand, and an old iPhone in the other. He was just sitting there, minding his own business, and I thought that it was an exciting picture to take. I finally saw the reason as to why capturing people is more important than only capturing animals and plants. Everything about showed me how there is more to the story because people like to hide the hidden truths and this guy was not afraid to show how he lives his life. All photographers have their moment of when they suddenly realize that they have found their main subjects, and I can say that it is amazing. Knowing that I want to tell stories through my photos rather than capturing a dull moment really helped me focus on having a goal to improve my writing in journalism. In my journalism class, I always knew that I was not the best writer in the class because I was lost in my photography, striving to find a new potential subject for my photos. Even though I would write for the paper, my photos to me, seemed bland since the topics for my article were bland as well but everyone thought the photo fit perfectly for the article. I was always willing to take the next step but I did not know how. My journalism teacher, Mr. Raisner, could tell that my writing was not improving in the way that he wanted it to be so he made sure to teach me the simplest ways of capturing a reader into a story. The narrative lede. I remember him reintroducing me to my lede from last year because he could tell that I was eager to have my own personal way of telling a story.He knew that I wanted to stand out as a photographer so he found a way to help me stand out as a writer, but with a twist; a story that made you feel like you were right next to the writer. I realize now that those two teachers helped me accomplish so many goals that I never thought I would achieve all in one school year. For photography, I found that capturing small moments in life tell small stories that eventually lead to seeing the bigger picture and I shared those photos through Scot Scoop News. With journalism, I was able to write compelling feature stories for the newspaper that grabbed you into reading more along with photos that made the story stand out to the readers. Since I always prefer to get straight to the point when it comes to writing, during my second semester, I got extremely interested in capturing sports and writing about them. I focused on track because they never get the recognition that they deserve. I wanted to show everyone that it does not matter if is classified as an individual sport, the hidden message is that it takes a whole team to bring them to victory.