2017 Rose Houlahan
The Hal Tayloe Enrichment Award is an incredible program at HRA, that grants students the opportunity to explore a talent or gift that he/she has expressed passion in. The grant that was gifted to me through this award is one that I will truly remember and cherish as the opportunity that allowed me to open my door to photography. I feel incredibly grateful that my name was included in the few that were called as one of the winners of this grant.
Upon embarking on my journey to Washington D.C. on July 14, camera in hand, I felt especially excited and prepared. This camera that I had was all new to me, and even after meeting with Mr. Nichols for the run-down, I still felt out of my league. However, after I began practicing, I found that photography came easy to me; and by the end of that weekend, it was second nature for me to snap a photo of anything that caught my eye. A week later, when my main road trip came around on July 19, I no longer felt like a beginner. In those 2 trips, I took over 1500 pictures and videos; capturing diverse people, new scenery, and exciting memories.
When it came time to create and upload to the website, my excitement grew further. However, the process of building a blog is not easy. It took hours trying out new themes and templates on a site called “Wix,” and among picking the right one, more hours were spent manipulating it until it looked exactly the way I imagined it. I found the actual uploading process to be even more tedious. I clicked through photos, finding my favorites, and uploaded them into the editor I would use called “PhotoScape X.” After editing the lighting, colors, and orientation of every picture to make it as high quality as possible, I then added them all to the blog post, and arranged them to be both accessible and aesthetically pleasing. Following the perfection and captioning of all the visuals, I spent time reflecting and reliving my amazing times in D.C., The Outer Banks, Myrtle Beach, Charleston, Atlanta, and Hendersonville. Starting with D.C., I thought about what the reader could gain from my experiences from an outside perspective, and began writing my blog post slanted toward what my audience would want to know. It was an amazing 4 days, and I found it hard consolidating it into a page and a half, but felt excited to share my excursions with other people. Finally—after 3 weeks of perfecting my post—I uploaded my trip to Washington D.C. to the public eye. I immediately felt a sense of accomplishment. I was excited about what I had created and wanted to share it with the rest of the world. Starting from absolutely nothing, I had taken this idea that I had, and—with the help of this grant—created something amazing and feasible out of it, something I was proud of.
On August 13, my sister and I attended a two-day music festival called “Moonrise” in Baltimore, Maryland. After a long and amazing day of seeing some of our favorite artists performing, we groggily walked back to our car at around 8 pm, ready for a five-hour trek back to Virginia. When we arrived at our vehicle, what we found left us speechless. The window was smashed, the back seat was empty, the trunk was open, and my camera was gone. Shelby had just moved out of her apartment that day, meaning that in that car was bags on top of bags of belongings, all vanished. Nothing like this had ever happened to us before. I was—am—devastated. This new-found passion that I had been exploring, cultivating, falling in love with for the past three months had been ripped from my hands, and there was nothing I could do about it.
As of now, I am somewhere in the photo editing stage of my many pictures from Charleston, South Carolina. I am enjoying the process, one photo at a time, and plan on uploading that trip sometime during first semester. As for the future of my blog, The Wildflower, I have been brainstorming ways to be able to get a replacement camera and keep my passion and project alive. However, with the juggling of schoolwork and volleyball, a job isn’t feasible for me for a few months, so I won’t be able to replace it until I can find a time to work outside of school. I don’t have doubts that I will be able to stay motivated in photography, because the three months of snapping pictures that I did have all felt so natural for me. I am immensely grateful to all the administration and to everyone involved in awarding me this grant. I will never forget all the moments and memories you all allowed me to capture this summer.
Upon embarking on my journey to Washington D.C. on July 14, camera in hand, I felt especially excited and prepared. This camera that I had was all new to me, and even after meeting with Mr. Nichols for the run-down, I still felt out of my league. However, after I began practicing, I found that photography came easy to me; and by the end of that weekend, it was second nature for me to snap a photo of anything that caught my eye. A week later, when my main road trip came around on July 19, I no longer felt like a beginner. In those 2 trips, I took over 1500 pictures and videos; capturing diverse people, new scenery, and exciting memories.
When it came time to create and upload to the website, my excitement grew further. However, the process of building a blog is not easy. It took hours trying out new themes and templates on a site called “Wix,” and among picking the right one, more hours were spent manipulating it until it looked exactly the way I imagined it. I found the actual uploading process to be even more tedious. I clicked through photos, finding my favorites, and uploaded them into the editor I would use called “PhotoScape X.” After editing the lighting, colors, and orientation of every picture to make it as high quality as possible, I then added them all to the blog post, and arranged them to be both accessible and aesthetically pleasing. Following the perfection and captioning of all the visuals, I spent time reflecting and reliving my amazing times in D.C., The Outer Banks, Myrtle Beach, Charleston, Atlanta, and Hendersonville. Starting with D.C., I thought about what the reader could gain from my experiences from an outside perspective, and began writing my blog post slanted toward what my audience would want to know. It was an amazing 4 days, and I found it hard consolidating it into a page and a half, but felt excited to share my excursions with other people. Finally—after 3 weeks of perfecting my post—I uploaded my trip to Washington D.C. to the public eye. I immediately felt a sense of accomplishment. I was excited about what I had created and wanted to share it with the rest of the world. Starting from absolutely nothing, I had taken this idea that I had, and—with the help of this grant—created something amazing and feasible out of it, something I was proud of.
On August 13, my sister and I attended a two-day music festival called “Moonrise” in Baltimore, Maryland. After a long and amazing day of seeing some of our favorite artists performing, we groggily walked back to our car at around 8 pm, ready for a five-hour trek back to Virginia. When we arrived at our vehicle, what we found left us speechless. The window was smashed, the back seat was empty, the trunk was open, and my camera was gone. Shelby had just moved out of her apartment that day, meaning that in that car was bags on top of bags of belongings, all vanished. Nothing like this had ever happened to us before. I was—am—devastated. This new-found passion that I had been exploring, cultivating, falling in love with for the past three months had been ripped from my hands, and there was nothing I could do about it.
As of now, I am somewhere in the photo editing stage of my many pictures from Charleston, South Carolina. I am enjoying the process, one photo at a time, and plan on uploading that trip sometime during first semester. As for the future of my blog, The Wildflower, I have been brainstorming ways to be able to get a replacement camera and keep my passion and project alive. However, with the juggling of schoolwork and volleyball, a job isn’t feasible for me for a few months, so I won’t be able to replace it until I can find a time to work outside of school. I don’t have doubts that I will be able to stay motivated in photography, because the three months of snapping pictures that I did have all felt so natural for me. I am immensely grateful to all the administration and to everyone involved in awarding me this grant. I will never forget all the moments and memories you all allowed me to capture this summer.
Hampton Roads Academy
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