Make Your Mark

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 Welcome to my AP for Journalism. In this unit, we focused on photojournalism. We learned about the functions of a camera and core parts of photography like aperture and shutter speed. We spoke with Caleb Hammernick, a professional photographer and photography teacher. We also talked about the book 'Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago'. We focused on the key parts of Lloyd and LeAlan's interviews for their book. While reading this chapter we searched for our definition of the meaning of life. Now for our AP, we are tasked with interviewing someone and documenting their meaning of life. I hope you enjoy this post and that my project helps you in your own search for your true meaning of life. 

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Make Your Mark


What is the meaning of life? This is the question that is guiding my search. This search led me to interview Tricia. Tricia describes herself as a mom of seven, with six living children, as a wife, a daughter, and a sister, and a friend. As someone who is originally from the southwest suburbs of Chicago, she identifies most with the Southside of Chicago. Another big part of her identity is that she is an educator. She is both an early childhood educator, as well as a college educator. She also works with families and young children, as well as teaching adults and preparing them to become educators to work with small children and families. 

CH. "Navy Pier, Boys." 2021. Edited.Our interview began in a KIA minivan on a stretch of I-90 headed through downtown Chicago. I went straight for it and directly asked Tricia what her meaning of life is. She paused for a moment and then answered with, "I believe the meaning of life is to serve others." Tricia continued to explain that serving others to her did not just mean serving people, but also serving animals, plants, and the environment as well. "I would say that the person who instilled this in me or my view of life the most is my mom," said Tricia. As we continued our conversation Tricia realized that while a big goal in her life was to serve others in the
         CH. "Navy Pier, Boys." 2021. Edited.           community, it was not her only goal. She also aspired to have her own family stating that, "my meaning of life is my own children. And so I'm glad I did all of those other things. But even if I had only had one child, and I have six, but even if I only had one, just raising my children to be good people, and leaving that mark positive mark on the world, that's huge." After collecting all this information, I now know that Tricia's meaning of life is to leave a positive mark on the world, whether that would be through her children or her time serving others in the community. 

After talking with Tricia and learning about her meaning of life. It would only be fair if I shared with you my meaning of life. I consider mine to be very simple because it follows three simple rules, find my happiness, be kind to all, and do no harm unto others. Simply I am saying that my meaning of life is to be a good person. I was raised by Tricia, and I hope that I am proof that she has succeeded at obtaining her goal and meaning in life. 

During our family day at Navy Pier, I took a picture of three of Tricia's sons peacefully enjoying Lake Michigan and the Chicago skyline together. I believe this represents Tricia's meaning of life as her children were a big part of our discussion. The picture was taken on my iPhone. The exposure time was 1/5,495 of a second and the ISO speed was 32. I had to use the rule of thirds. The rule of thirds helps you align the subject of your photo with each side of the picture. For this picture, I made sure that my subjects were in the two bottom rows of the grid and the water and skyline were only the main focus at the top row. For example, if you want your subject in the center of the photo, you line them up with the middle
                                                                                 CH. "Navy Pier, Boys." 2021. Original.
squares. I also had to take into account aperture. The aperture is the opening of a lens's diaphragm through which light passes to print the image onto the back of the camera. The aperture for this picture was F/1.8. Another word for this would be shutter speed. I decided to edit the picture to help enhance the blue and purple colors in the picture. In the end, I used the iPhone photos edit software to make my edits. 


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I enjoyed completing this project and liked practicing my interviewing and photography skills. I would have liked the chance to have taken a picture with a professional camera instead of the camera on my phone and see how that would have turned out. I believe my picture is objective because the viewer can pull their own meaning from the photo when looking at it, but at the same time, I believe it has a universal meaning of family and youth. 
                                            





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