Photo: Cynthia Driver ‘13
At Vernondale Country Store in North Sutton, Cynthia Driver ’13 captured the flavor of the welcoming establishment, restored to a 1930s setting complete with lunch counter and friendly conversation. of hours, and he welcomed her with an easy smile. “Sure, no problem at all,” he said. “This will be great.” By then all the other students were done shooting and back at their computers in Reichhold. There was an air of excitement, of accomplishment, as they downloaded their images and began selecting which to include in their layouts. Shearer moved from screen to screen. He critiqued pictures with a smile, his voice even and unfailingly upbeat.
“Here, let me show you something about layers and Photoshop,” he told Monique Fontaine ’13, finessing her environmental portrait of the Lebanon Municipal Airport manager. Carly Strathdee ’13, a Media Studies major from New Durham, N.H., worked on her images of Spring Ledge Farm and enthused about her first photography class experience. “[Professor of Humanites] Donna Berghorn really plugged this course; she said it would be helpful and fun, and she was right. John is great, and I want
to be a reporter, so I think seeing this aspect of journalism is really important,” said Strathdee. Exposure to photojournalism, minimal though it may have been in such a short class, was Shearer’s goal in proposing the course. “Colby-Sawyer offers majors in graphic design and photography, and media studies, but there are no photojournalism courses. The photography program is primarily fine arts, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it would be great to add some commercial
application. It was from that standpoint that I thought, Gee, it would be interesting and great to offer something like this course because it sharpens those professional skills. You can harness that and use that. If you want to go be a photographer, it’s going to give you some underpinning.” Jess Walton ’13, one of the few photography majors in the weekend course, would like to get into travel photography and said she wishes there were a photojournalism aspect of the Colby-Sawyer photography program. “There were only 15 seats Fall 2013
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