Photography for Global Talk
Volunteer service comes in many shapes and sizes, and this opportunity came to me when a friend asked me to photograph the weekly UWF event called Global Talk. Each week at Global Talk a speaker from a different country or culture comes and teaches the participants about their home language and culture. For my volunteer work, I photographed these events, focusing on highlighting each speaker and their interactions with the students.
There are many different reasons someone can find impact and meaning in volunteer work. For me this experience was important in many ways. I love photography, but before this experience I had never really photographed people. This volunteer work was a big step out of my zone of knowledge, but I learned a lot about things like focus and editing. I can absolutely see the progress in the quality of my photos and subject placement as I continue to photograph Global Talk.
This was also a meaningful experience for me because while photographing, I got to participate with everyone else in the event, learning about all sorts of different languages and cultures, from Italian all the way to American Sign Language. While I might not be able to speak them, learning about how other people think and differ from what I know is a very useful skill that can apply in every aspect of my life.
I believe this has been a very beneficial experience for me in the engineering field, even if it may not seem so at first. Like my trip to Spain, experiencing and learning about cultures different from your own is very important for engineers. This is because engineers collaborate with all sorts of different people in the work force and have to be able to solve problems for societies of all different backgrounds.
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