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Lights, Camera, Jake Veillette!

When Jake Veillette was in sixth grade, he joined the middle school Photography Club to learn more about photo; however, his interest didn’t really start until he was in his freshman year of high school when he joined Journalism.

Veillette, Hawk Headlines Photo Director, has always been fascinated with the world of photography ever getting his first camera in elementary school. Veillette has come a long way, learning different techniques on how to take a good picture and learning how to properly use a camera.

Veillette first became interested with photography when he was about six years old and he got his first camera for Christmas.

“I got this little Canon point and shoot that was just awful, it had such bad photo quality. But, I loved it. And I always would use it and I brought it everywhere,” says Veillette.

But he didn’t learn everything he knows today alone, he had help along the way from other journalists. “I remember the day, Andrea Hansen, did her photo lesson. I immediately knew what I wanted to do in journalism. And from there, I was the one who went to everything. I went to as many basketball games, football games, whatever it may be. I went everywhere I could. And that’s when I got my first nice camera,” Veillette explains.

Veillette hasn’t just learned how to take photos, he has learned more about to edit photos and about different Adobe apps.

“The whole photo department and doing photography for journalism, taught me post production. I later learned Photoshop, even thought I always had a slight knowledge. I would use, knockoff versions, like GIMP, but it was definitely different from Photoshop. My freshman year when I came into Journalism, and I had the resources to use stuff like that, Abobe Photoshop and Light Room and even learning other programs like InDesign. I learned a lot of the Adobe Suite through that,” states Veillette.

Although his knowledge is extensive, Veillette hasn’t taken any photo classes at Woodland yet, but he has plans to the 2019-2020 school year.

“I have not taken a photo class at Woodland. Everything I learned was from Andrea Hanson who graduated last year. She was the director of the Photo Department last year and she taught me post production composition, but I am enrolled in Photo One and Two for next year,” states Veillette.

Veillette also takes photos outside of Journalism. Shooting with his 50 MM lens, he enjoys going outside to take photos of whatever he could, like trees or the sky. But his favorite types of photos to take are portraits.

“I love portraits. I love getting a subject and just taking a portait of them. I feel like people are the most interesting to photograph, because everyone has a story and they’re really fun to take.”

For beginner photographers, Veillette advises to always be confident in your work, and to not let others change what you think is a good photo.

“Photography has rules, but you don’t have to always listen to them. I always hear rule of thirds, and how important that is. But in actuality, it’s not everything; you can make a good photo without rule of thirds. Don’t let other people’s critiques change how you photograph; take it with ease, but don’t listen to people because they have different views. Your photography is your own, and whatever you think is good is good; you’ll learn and you’ll adapt it as long as you continue doing it,” Veillette says.

In only one year, Veillette went from knowing the bare minimum about photography, to running the Hawk Headlines Photo Department.

“I didn’t think it would happen as quickly as it happened. I thought maybe like my senior year, I would maybe run a department but I didn’t expect it my sophomore year.”

Kylie Leonard

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