For senior and AP Photo student James Welden, photography has become a significant creative outlet, as both a fun class and as a hobby. While he talked about already having experience outside of school, the class was a definite factor in broadening his skills: generally with using a camera, using Photoshop as a more specialized tool, and capturing his vision more for composition.

“I’ve come a long way through this class, and I’ve benefited a lot more, and I’ll continue to do photography as a hobby,” Welden said.

Welden mentioned how throughout his experience as a photography student at Campo one of his highlights has become discovering certain moments he found are best for taking certain photos. “Going out at night, especially when it’s raining, to take photos was a core memory,” he noted, adding, “the class [at Campo] taught me a lot of techniques and strategies to capture more photos and better capture certain things.”

As the school year wraps up Welden shared a couple of photos that best represented his vision as a photography student and again emphasized the value of Campo’s Photo classes in enhancing his creative interests.

That was just outside of iTea, late at night; I took it because my theme for my AP portfolio was night photography and it fit the mood. I wanted to capture the unique lighting in that situation and I feel like my portfolio contains a lot of self portraits so it fits. I chose that one because it evokes a certain vibe while also looking cool.

I want people to see the mood i was trying to capture and showing the beauty of nighttime and the dim lighting and the unique stuff you can do with it.