My Time with GVSU University Communications



Developing My Eye: My Time with GVSU University Communications

Before I ever worked for University Communications, I was familiar with their photography.

During my first two years at Grand Valley, I had seen the work they were creating across the university, and I admired it. By the time my junior year rolled around, I was already working for two years as a photographer at Promotions Office and had started building confidence in myself and my photography. I knew wanted to push myself further and learn as much as I could while still in college. So when I heard University Communications was looking for a student photographer, I thought, Why not? I don't think I realized then just how different the experience would be for me.

Learning to See Differently

When I started with University Communications in October 2024,

I already knew how to make a good photograph. What began to change was the way I thought about everything happening around that photograph. Kendra, the lead staff photographer, and Cory, a staff photographer, both came from journalism backgrounds.

Working alongside them introduced me to something I still think about constantly: developing your eye.

A developed eye is difficult to explain until you start seeing it in other photographers.

It's the ability to notice the light, the details, the people and the moments happening around you. It's being hyper-aware of an environment and thinking beyond the photograph everyone else could make. Instead, you're asking yourself what you're seeing differently and what you can bring to it. Their feedback pushed me toward that way of thinking. Sometimes it was through cropping or toning. Sometimes it was trying another angle or cleaning something up within the frame. Other times, it was simply their encouragement to keep trying something different.

Hearing that they loved the work I was creating meant a lot to me,

but so did knowing they were willing to show me where I could push it further.

I became a little addicted to that. Every assignment became another opportunity to come back with something better.

From Photographing an Event to Telling Its Story

Before UCOMM, I think I approached a lot of assignments by asking myself,

How can I make really good photographs of this? Working with University Communications added another question:  How do I actually tell the story of this?

Who matters here? What details am I missing? What establishes the environment? Where is the emotion? If somebody wasn't here, what would they need to see to understand what happened?

I had always been good at environmental photographs, especially in sports. But I started realizing that an environment wasn't the entire story. I needed the details. I needed the reactions. I needed to pay attention to the smaller moments happening around the obvious one.

One of the biggest tests of that came in 2025 when I traveled to North Carolina during spring break to photograph Grand Valley students volunteering in communities affected by hurricane Helene. I was sent there to document the experience and had to come back with the photographs that would tell that story. I had to pay attention, make those decisions and trust my own eye. Photography had also suddenly taken me somewhere I never would have expected to go. That became one of the things I loved about working for UCOMM: my camera kept putting me in rooms, places and experiences I wouldn't have encountered otherwise.

When They Started Trusting My Eye

As I continued working, that trust grew. There were assignments that required me to

photograph, edit and turn around images that same night for GVNext stories. There were

football games where dependable coverage of university leadership was part of my responsibility.

Eventually, there were sporting events where I knew they trusted me to go out and come back with what they needed.

Commencement became one of my favorite examples. During spring commencement in 2026, I photographed the Friday evening ceremony before graduating myself the following day. I brought confetti with me, found a few students outside and asked if they would use it for a photograph. Later, after graduating, I opened an email sent to my own alumni account - and there was my photograph. There was something surreal about that. I wasn't only a student experiencing Grand Valley anymore. I was also helping create the photographs Grand Valley was using to remember and represent those experiences.

Finding Sports Again

University Communications also brought me back to where photography

originally started for me: sports.  I had photographed sports heavily before college,

but that part of my work had gone somewhat dormant. Promotion Office took me in other directions, and for a while,

I simply didn't have the same access to athletics. Then I started photographing sports again through UCOMM. I covered women's wrestling in late 2024. I started photographing basketball again in 2025, and something clicked. It revived a part of photography that had always been important to me and eventually pushed me to pursue even more sports work. At the same time, the storytelling lessons I was learning through UCOMM started changing the way I photographed athletics. I had always been drawn to the environment surrounding sports, but now I wanted to deepen the coverage. I started looking harder for emotion, details and the moments happening outside of the obvious action. Sports had always been something I could see myself pursuing professionally.

Now I was beginning to understand how I wanted to photograph it.

The Assignment I Kept Asking For

In 2025, Grand Valley women's basketball made it to the national championship.

I wanted to go. Badly. I asked about photographing it, but there wasn't a media credential available for me. I was a little heartbroken, but I also knew there could always be another year.

So when the 2026 season came around, I started putting it out there early: if they make it again, I want to go.

I photographed eight games during the season, and when Grand Valley made another

championship run, Cory, who had photographed the championship the year before, advocated for me to go this time. I was incredibly thankful. It felt validating to know that somebody whose work I respected trusted me enough to say, essentially, send Emily. So I went to Pittsburgh.

There was pressure, especially having to turn around photographs during the game faster than I was used to, but I wasn't worried about whether I could deliver. I knew I could.

Then Grand Valley won. Confetti was falling. The team was lifting the trophy.

There were cameras everywhere, tears being shed, and all of it was happening directly in front of me.

I photographed it live.

One of those photographs later became part of university marketing project with the words Fuel the Win

It's still one of the most iconic photographs I've made. But what stays with me the most was the reality of standing there in the first place: I could do this.

More Than the Photographs

By that point, University Communications had become much more than another campus job.

I had photographed major university events, athletics, students, faculty and university leadership. I had gotten to know people across Grand Valley in a completely different way. I went from being a student who admired the university's photography to becoming one of the photographers trusted to help document it.

That relationship became especially meaningful as I approached graduation. When I realized I was short credits, I approached the team about continuing my work through the summer. They helped me turn that work into an internship that allowed me to complete the credits I needed for my degree while continuing to do the kind of photography I wanted to pursue professionally.

It meant a lot to know that the same people who had invested so much in my development as a photographer were also helping me cross the finish line as a student. Even after finishing my student role, I wasn't completely leaving. I've continued returning to University Communications as a freelance photographer, still documenting a university that became such an important part of my development.

Still Developing My Eye

Before UCOMM, I knew how to make photographs.

What changed was how much I started to see - and where I started to look.

I started looking beyond the obvious image. I became more aware of light, emotion, details and the relationships between photographs. I started asking not only whether an image was good, but why I made it, what it added and whether there was another way I could see it.

Developing my eye is something I still work at.

Every time I pick up a camera, I strive to see more,  pay closer attention and push the way I photograph a little further.

That's one of the most important things University Communications taught me.