For as long as I can remember, I have been captivated by stories. Storytelling, to me, is an underappreciated art – it serves to connect us to one another, to allow us to understand ourselves and the world we live in at a much more intimate level and to highlight the intricacies of life.
Even more enthralling than the substance of a story, though, are the people involved. From Captain Nemo’s gentle madness in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea to Spike Spiegel’s inability to let go of his past in Cowboy Bebop, all of my favorite fictional stories are made compelling by their complex characters.
Through my experience in The Sidekick, I have come to see newspaper stories are no different. Whether a sports, news or entertainment story, the value and impact of a piece revolves around the people involved. Our best work is that which connects directly to our community, and to the untold or hidden stories of the people we walk the halls with every day.
I joined The Sidekick in my junior year as what adviser Chase Wofford calls a “Sidekick Legacy” – my elder sister, CHS 2020 graduate Akansha, had been a part of The Sidekick when I was in sixth and seventh grades.
Being the impassioned younger sibling I was, I always wanted to copy everything my sister did, which was what fueled my initial interest in the newspaper. When I had the opportunity to join the program, I was daunted by the shoes I had to fill, but excited for an opportunity to be as cool as she was.
Over the past couple of years, though, I have developed a different perception of my relationship to my sister. Maybe it is because of the increasingly apparent similarities between us (with many of my friends saying we look just like twins, that we both want to go into engineering or the fact that I am even going to the same college, University of Southern California, as her), but I have started to almost fear the association we share, that some people may just see me as a “younger Akansha” and not as my own person with my own experiences.
However, I have never felt this way in The Sidekick. One of the many attributes of journalism is the versatility – you can develop anything from podcasts to written in-depth pieces in order to tell any story of your choosing, and all of these components come together nicely to form a comprehensive publication. While my sister focused on the writing side of journalism, I focused on photography, offering me my own, unique experiences and challenges.
Another virtue of journalism is that it is never stagnant. The news is never the same on two separate days, and each and every event is a new, relevant experience to have and a new story to tell. No two days are ever the same; in a similar sense, no two journalists can have quite the same experience either.
I was gifted my first camera by my father when I was 8, mainly using it to capture scenery on family vacations, but I have come to apply that early fostered love for the art in new ways through The Sidekick.
Photojournalism has given me the chance to truly tell a story through my photos – to capture the raw emotions that draw you into a moment, to convey the sentiment of that moment through those emotions and to communicate the spirit and character of people or events.
Even with photography, the essence of storytelling always comes back to the people. All of my favorite photos from my work with The Sidekick have been of people, whether portraits or action shots. It is always said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and that could not ring more true than with photojournalism.
I believe in the power of a story. To inspire, to make one more informed and to make one feel. Stories are impactful because they allow you to connect to someone else in a way that you may not have noticed before.
The Sidekick has not only given me the chance to tell the stories of others, but to define my own as well.
Follow Sohana (@sohanas_4841) and @CHSCampusNews on X.
