Photography Club hopes to capture new members
Interested in improving your photography skills?
If so, try joining the recently created Photography Club on campus.
All you need is simply any kind of camera. Many students are already members of the club, each with different equipment, different knowledge and/or different photography styles. This allows everyone to learn from each other and develop new skills. They learn through weekly meetings, a Discord server and even small shoots that they sometimes do for other clubs.
Club President Jordan Joyce has been into photography for about five years and even ran a photography club in high school. He said he enjoyed running it so much that, after discovering MSU didn’t have a photography club, he immediately jumped at the opportunity to start one last November.
At the moment, the club is still young and quite small. Joyce talked about the struggles he faces because of the low number of members, altering how the club is running. For example, lately they haven’t been able to have their weekly meetings because most of the students in the club don’t have the time in their schedule to make those weekly meetings.
“We can’t exactly do the club how I would like the club to be run at the moment. We just don’t have enough people at those meetings to do the kind of workshopping stuff that I want to do,” Joyce said.
Recently they’ve been participating in fairs and advertising to gain new members. Joyce said he wants to do a fundraiser this semester to raise the group’s profile.
Joyce also talked about the importance of photography and why he felt it was necessary to start a photography club.
“It’s an important art because it allows a lot of people to see parts of the world in a way that they never would have been able to see it before. Traditional art allows you to see everything through the artist’s lens. The artist will show you their view of the world. In photography, I believe you get a much more objective stance,” Joyce said.
“It all sort of just boils down to the point of: The camera doesn’t lie. So 90% of the time, what you take a photo of is what you see in the world, and I believe that’s quite an important perspective to have,” Joyce said.
The Photography club is always open for students to join.
“Regardless of if you have a proper camera, just being able to take some slightly better photos or just have a little bit of knowledge around editing and things like that, I feel is just quite beneficial regardless of what you do,” Joyce said.
Write to Jack Harding at jack.harding@mnsu.edu
Header Photo: This photo of an elephant taken by club president Jordan Joyce is one of the many photos students in photography club shared during meetings. (Courtesy Jordan Joyce)