the feature hunt

With two photo classes and CM-Life, I am hard-pressed to find stories, all the time. Which means my Saturdays often are eaten up by time spent feature hunting. Today's issue of CM-Life illustrates the fruits of a recent story find.

Kaitlynn Craven, 8, pushes her stepsister Aspen Campbell, 4, as their grandmother, Julie Campbell, leads their sister Ashley Craven, 11, on a ride on 6 year old miniature horse Brownie Tuesday at the girls' grandparents' home in Greendale Township. In addition to Brownie, the Campbells have 9 chickens, 3 dogs, and a pony.

There's something vaguely exciting about the feature hunt; a sense of adventuring journalist, or the closest I can get until I grow up and run away to be a war photographer in Africa. And with that sense of adventure also comes an appropriate sense of apprehension. It freaks me out to just go barreling into people's lives on a whim.

My friend Jake May and I went 'hunting' on Saturday, and I ventured out again on Sunday afternoon with a CM-Life reporter, Sarah Schuch, filling page upon page in my cutline book full of phone numbers and possible leads. Yet nothing panned out extensively over the weekend - Saturday we did a lot of legwork for stories, but I didn't get to shoot anything. Frustrating.

Sunday was more immediately successful. Sarah and I combed the sides of M-2o for interesting characters, and came across a little house with animals in the backyard over which I yelped, mistaking them for llamas. They turned out to be of a more equine nature - a pony and a miniature horse. (Embarrassing, because I spent my childhood swallowing Saddle Club novels and saving money for my own horse, which I eventually had throughout high school. you'd think I would recognize a horse's profile. In my defense, "Brownie," the miniature, was lying down with his nose out and back to us, and we passed them at about 65 mph...)

Julie Campbell kisses to her 6 year old miniature horse, Brownie, Sunday afternoon in her backyard in Greendale Township.

Though a little scary and sometimes an exercise in patience, feature hunting is a key part of photojournalism, and I'm glad I put in some time over the weekend. It's validating to realize I am starting to fully enjoy more of the whole process of storytelling, including the digging.