Student Union

“You can’t shoot the same thing all the time,” Sammuel Lopez-Licea says in response to our comment about the variety of subjects he chooses for his photos. The choosing is pretty much the easy part: many things catch his eye. What’s equally creative and most interesting to him is deciding how he wants to depict those interests—how he’ll use composition, framing, motion, light, and color, or how he’ll take color away in post-processing.

From the photos that Ben sent us prior to his graduation from Appalachian State with a degree in commercial photography, we were not surprised to learn that he grew up wanting to be a film director. “It was a big dream from the time I was a little kid,” he says. But when he got into photography, he found the still image had its own esthetic attractions, and practical advantages. “I can get my models to places I wouldn’t be able to get a film crew to,” Ben says, “and I’m able to create images that are visually more appealing than anything I can do on film right now.”

Rebecca is a senior at ASU and will graduate in December with a degree in technical photography. She came to the university intending to study graphic design, but when she couldn’t get into that program she switched to photography. It was a good move, as her interest in and love of photography grew from her first class, and today she cannot imagine doing anything else.

Joseph L. Koch
We liked Joseph’s work right away, but when we found out that he took these photos in his kitchen, we were even more impressed. “The school has a full studio,” Joseph says, “but there are 2000 students, and booking studio time when I work full-time is difficult.” A home studio setup for product-related assignments turned out to be an ideal solution.

Joseph’s job is in retail, and upon graduation this March he’ll be working toward an art director position with a major corporation, a position that he feels will allow him to showcase his photo talents and creative eye. “The fascination is to come up with a concept and then implement it, to express an idea in powerful imagery.”

When we spoke with Nathan he was less than a year out of high school and about to conclude the first year of the academy’s two-year program, where his photo class assignments are often more than classwork. “Most of them are practice for me; they get my ideas going, and I go out and do my own shots,” he says. Several of the photos here resulted from that kind of inspiration. The smoking man is Nathan’s grandfather, who also appears in the staged behind-bars image—proving once again the value of a cooperative relative.

A photo history course introduced Nathan to some of the classic black-and-white images, and their compositional strength was a major influence on his work. “I think black and white makes a stronger statement than color,” Nathan says, “and I think that all my really strong compositions will be in black and white.” Still, because he shoots Raw files with his camera set for black and white, the Raw file is preserving the scene’s color so he can compare the results after the capture.

Steven Spoto
Seffner Christian Academy
Seffner, Florida

Set Pieces

Although Seffner doesn’t offer formal photography classes, Steven, who is a senior at the school, added to his self-taught skills by joining the school’s photo club, which his father, Joe, instructs. “But what got me started in photography,” Steven says, “was the photography merit badge in Boy Scouts, which my dad also teaches.”

Steven’s been on the school’s yearbook staff for two years as a photographer and editor, and he’s won several first prizes in the Florida State Fair youth photography competition.

The documentary style and strong compositions that mark his black-and-white, toned, and muted-color photos attracted our attention. Steven says he’s definitely drawn to the carefully arranged, carefully thought-out image. “When I was first getting into photography…I saw the work of Ansel Adams, and he did a very good job of making sure that everything in his pictures was exactly the way he wanted it. I always thought that’s the kind of thing I want to try to imitate.

It’s a small magazine—51⁄2x41⁄4 inches, 16 black-and-white pages—handmade, unpretentious and totally engaging, charming even. Room 620 is published quarterly during the school year by the students in Joe Baltz’s third-year photography class at Joliet Central High.