now who knew too much to me  interview i am helping them with camera presence and asking questions and knowing how to get your view and how to get answers to your questions and not accept it when sometimes people are in face of or don't quite answer the question fully how did just how to just start doing these type of things teaching students how to use the interviewing skills and such well i was a reporter for a long time for king five news here in seattle and so i learned them as i was doing it and then now when i left broadcasting i got very interested in media and why certain things are on media and why things aren't and more media criticism and media literacy and so i started working with youth and then i had this great opportunity to work with this group and help them actually go out and be reporters and do a documentary so i jumped at the chance you knew that you wanted to be to report her or what influenced you to do so when i was very small i wanted to be on television and there were no black women on television the rivera few women on television there certainly were no black women and so when i was older i knocked on the doors of the t v stations and i asked people that i knew who had more power than i did to knock on the doors of the t v stations and see if they'd give me a job and i got a job as an intern when i was sixteen and i went on to get a journalism scholarship to school and i was in the right place at the right time and had the right skills and so i got opportunities and i made the best of those to get to what i'm doing now would you say there are any influential people or people who pushed you to do more than you could think so oh of course i had incredible parents who were amazing when it came to supporting my education and my goals and my dreams and no matter how lofty they seemed or impossible that they they might have seemed to me or to them they supported whatever i wanted to do and made sure that i had the education to pursue whatever those dreams were has there been a story you've ever done where it's touched your push to to do what you do now even more i think being a black woman at that at the time when i was reporting i had the opportunity to interview to do the catalyst things and i always wanted to be ready when the opportunities came i would say media is the most powerful tool that there is media's so influence the vietnam war the ending of the vietnam war we live in a world where there are way way more houses that have to televisions than two parents we live in a world where there are seven billion people six billion of them have access to mobile telephones which of course is form of media only four and a half million have access to toilets so media is a big influence and what would you recommend for youths who are interested in who are interested in learning these type of techniques or learn as much as you can read as much as you can write i have curiosity about about things i am not one who majored in journalism though i did get a journalism scholarship i majored in psychology at a small liberal arts school they didn't even offer journalism so i kind of turned down that journalism scholarship and took lots of classes religion and botany and just things that i didn't think i'd ever use but just knowing a little bit about them helped me when i had to interview all kinds of people and scientists and and surgeons and ditch diggers and engineers and architects and as i said presidents and all kinds of people you need to be able to talk to almost anybody about almost anything and you have to be a quick study sell those things are really important it's a fantastic field to get into because it's you learn so much every day you learn new things and you have access to summer youth media program and so that means i just work with the students teaching them mostly how to do for tugger fee we go to the youth  focus center in the mornings from nine thirty am till noon and we instruct them on photographing and editing their work in the computer how long have you worked w use force program and do you have hard do you think you're going to be with them this is my first year but i hope to come back every summer and keep working with them for as long as this program exists and how long have you been interested in photography i've been interested in photography since i was a little girl like really small probably about six what was a subset for you in order to be you know in order to connect you with what you are with right now first it was asking for a camera and then i just started taking pictures of my friends and learning what i liked and what i didn't like then i took a photography class in high school and continued to try to fit classes in college of a community college and then they transferred to seattle university where i mean during in photography and senior this year and will be graduating in two thousand and fourteen with my bachelor's in fine arts of photography what do you hope to accomplish with which photography in the future i hope to be a strong documentary photographer and hopefully take a picture that is going to change the world are there any topics you feel strongly about right now mostly just social justice and environmentalism i just things getting people more involved with what's going on around them in the world instead of kind of sitting around ignorantly and not being engaged or aware so photography and film are very powerful tools to make people aware of things and that's what i hope to do is to raise awareness using my camera have there been any influential people that pushed you to do these things my grandpa was a photographer he did mostly wedding photography but i wanted to do something i don't like weddings so i wanted to do something a little bit different with my photography i definitely had an instructor who saw my work and saw the work that i was producing and encouraged me to push me for a word standing up for what's right trying to make a difference being accountable for your own actions realizing that we're all connected and so everything that you do affects somebody or something so i think those are the moral foundations that inspire my photography and my desire to bring awareness to people what would you say is your best talker fee and what was the story behind it i don't know that's kind of a hard question i'd like to think that i like all of my work otherwise i wouldn't do it at least use it to grow from i recently got back from india and i took a lot of pictures while i was there i don't know if i would call it my best shot good for you but it is my most recent so i hope that it's better than previous work that i've done in the past because i feel like we should all if you're an artist be constantly growing and learning and you know expanding  also help with any and all technical issues that arise mostly mentoring help him cope with their project ideas and just generally helping us much like him how were you first introduced to photography and what influenced you to do so basically i like art i like visual art but i can't draw so that left me basically with just photography those quite a few years meant photography very influential i had not done any film photography before going to college and there they had it amazing the had a darkroom that a very strong film talk for program and that's where i was introduced to film which i and how did you why did you decide to do this program and i started this program last year which is the first year of the program as a volunteer i decided to do it because in a conversation  with my advisor claire it'd come up i was considering doing a project related to the installation of the streetcar near us to tears so it's really interested in the redevelopment itself and i hadn't heard of a project that uses the youth to document their own community before so i was very curious to see how it work so this is your second year and what do you expect to do differently this time that you didn't do that last year and ideally we'll be slightly more going to this year in actual fact yeah probably not but the main difference i've noticed so far this year is we've got five out of our twelve are returning students which is awesome they're taking very strong leadership roles i've noticed within our group discussions we're much more active this year than we were last year they're starting to cope their ideas for the documentaries are getting much more more focused ideas than we had a week to only week two last year they had no idea what they were going to do we were working up on ideas till week four and five out of six this year i'm confident with the additional gauge we're getting students that i've been working with have learned many things they've learned photography skills how to use the different settings on a camera so it's not just hitting everything on auto but actually learning how to manipulate the camera settings so they get the types of photos that are much more interesting that capture their unique point of view the other thing that i think that they have learned is how to use the camera how to use photography as a way to investigate what's going on in their community so that they can create images that tell stories i think even  if hopefully some of the students will continue with photography because i think it's something that is a great mode of self expression but i think what they've learned in this program that i hope that they can continue to take with them is how to think critically about what they see how to interpret images so that they can think about the messages that they might be conveying  also how to work together as a team and think about ways they can work together with others in either addressing problems that they see or putting forward  making change so that the world that they want to be in has all has everything that they want in it the story the the projects that they're working on so in the beginning we wanted to get the students to understand what digital storytelling is so we went through a process of them creating photographs that captured an accomplishment in their life a personal accomplishment or  special person or special place so they learned how to create that through photographs and then the after they did that they applied those same skills to tell stories about yes there are terrorists whether it's community gardens that are have been cultivated by residents for years and years and asking the question what's going to happen to them after redevelopment they're talking about changes to the community center and they're to also talking about how the redevelopment is affecting local businesses in addition to the residents who are being moved out in phases so there those are the three to four stories that they're going to be telling through their photographs students all have have shown that they are that they can understand not only the importance of composition and how to make strong photographs i've seen them grow in their photographs before everybody was kind of taking pictures with the eyelevel not really thinking about what was in the frame so i think they're creating more interesting images and i think individually i have seen them show that they really care about their community that they not all of them live in a yes or terrace of the majority of them do but they care about what's going on and that it makes them sad when they see people it makes them sad to see people having to move out when they've lived there for years and years one of the students has lived there for twelve or thirteen years so she has really distinct memories about learning how to ride a bike at the community center so it'll be interesting to see how these students once they leave us are terrorists after they've created all these photographs hopefully that'll yes there will