Sophomore Jesse Balmer had never tried taking pictures of the night sky before but had decided to try after seeing other peoples attempts at it on Instagram. He had to take multiple shots to figure out which aperture, the opening through which light enters a camera, and exposure, amount of light per a unit area, worked best for the long distance shot. Balmer ended up using an aperture of 3.5 and an exposure of 30 seconds. “There’s nothing to focus on so you have to have it always be right and a little to the left,” Balmer said.

Balmer started taking pictures last fall gaining inspiration from his grandfather, Tom Brown, and Instagram. Balmer’s grandfather, a professional photographer, was impressed by his photos. “He understood how I did it he just hadn’t tried it [himself] before,” Brown said. Balmer went to Saylorville Lake to take this picture.

Persevering to gain confidence in her drawing skills sophomore Amy Nguyen took inspiration from her older sister’s drawing style. “I always looked up to my sister,” Nguyen said. “Her style was so unique and it was her. At first I sucked at [drawing] but then I kept doing it cause it was fun and something that took my mind off of other things.”

This is not her only drawing of a character from the T.V. show “Teen Titans”, Nguyen has drawn all five of the main characters. She started drawing them after seeing her siblings watch the remake “Teen Titans Go!” and the encouragement they gave her to try. Raven, the one in the picture, is the only one completely done out of the five.

Nguyen has also drawn Chun-Li from the video game “Street Fighter”, some characters from “Suicide Squad” and Jack Frost from “Rise of the Guardians”. She has also drawn some original characters of her own.

Wanting to see the details of her own eye junior Kinsey Sample has taken pictures like this before but never of her own eye. Sample had to use a mirror to help get the close up. “Eyes have always fascinated me,” she said.“I like seeing the details inside of the iris and I wanted to see the exact details.” 

Sample has taken many different types of photos but her favorites are portraits. “I’ve always liked looking at photos and [have] been really intrigued by others’ photos,” Sample said. “I take [pictures] whenever I feel like I’m in a good picture taking place.”